Category: Joe Guzzardi

Don Newcombe Used Alcoholic Tragedy To Heal Others

By Joe Guzzardi

Late in his long and memorable life, Brooklyn Dodgers ace Don Newcombe said that helping people get sober meant more to him than all his baseball accomplishments. Considering that the 6’4”/240-lb. Newcombe won the 1949 Rookie of the Year award, captured the first Cy Young Award in 1956, and in that same year was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player, his statement about the importance of helping others is powerful.

Newcombe is the only player in baseball history to win ROY, MVP and Cy Young titles. In 1956, “Big Newk” went 27-7, an improvement over his 1955 20-5 record. For good measure, Newcombe during those two years, hit a combined .298, with nine home runs and 16 extra base hits. During his career with the Dodgers, the Cincinnati Reds and the Cleveland Indians, Newcombe won 163 games and had a stellar .614 winning percentage. Newcombe could always wield the lumber; his batting average for his 12-year Major League Baseball stint was .269 with 52 extra base hits that included 15 home runs.

Newcombe, the third black MLB pitcher after the Dodgers’ Dan Bankhead and the Cleveland Indians’ Satchel Paige, was a workhorse who routinely pitched on two days of rest, and in 1950 started both ends of a double header against the Philadelphia Phillies. In the opener, Newk hurled a complete game shutout and, in the nightcap, pitched into the seventh inning. Newcombe’s pitching line for the day: 16 IP, H 11, ER 2, BB 2, SO 3. During the Korean War, when the U.S. Army drafted the New York Giants’ Willie Mays and Newcombe. Dodger manager Chuck Dressen cried foul. “Losing Newcombe is worse than losing Mays. Where can you get a pitcher like that?” he asked.

As he dominated National League batters, unbeknownst to his teammates, Newcombe was deeply caught up in alcoholism’s throes. After the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, Newcombe’s time with the team became short-lived. The pitcher had a fear of flying, and his fellow Dodgers noticed that he relied on alcohol to overcome his apprehensions. Society for American Baseball Research historian Russell Bergtold wrote that 1957 was a turning point for Newcombe. The Dodgers, 84-70, finished in third place, 14 games behind the Milwaukee Braves. Newcombe was an unimpressive 11-12, but made off-the-field headlines for the wrong reasons. On August 21, after pitching a five-hit shutout over the Cincinnati Reds, Newcombe was driving his father home when he struck a four-year-old boy with his car. A few months later, Newcombe and two of his brothers were accused of assaulting a former East Orange New Jersey policeman at Newcombe’s Newark tavern. The vehicle incident was settled out of court for $5,000, and the Newcombe brothers were acquitted in court trial.

Alcohol may have been the common denominator in Newcombe’s troubles with the law. In 1965, Newcombe told the monthly magazine “Ebony” that for many years “he was a stupefied, wife-abusing, child-frightening, falling-down drunk,” behavior that explained his temperamental, belligerent baseball outbursts and led to his 1960 divorce from wife Freddie Green. To finance his alcohol dependency, Newcombe sold his 1955 World Series ring and an expensive watch before he declared bankruptcy. Peter O’Malley, then-Dodgers vice president, bought back the ring and watch, and returned them to a grateful Newcombe. Finally, in 1966, Newcombe’s second wife, Billie Roberts, threatened to leave him, and take their two children unless he quit drinking.

Roberts’ ultimatum was the catalyst that put the pitcher on a life-long campaign to raise awareness about, and fight against, alcohol abuse. As a recovering alcoholic, Newk created the Dodger’s substance abuse awareness program, and became a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism consultant, as well as the New Beginning Alcohol and Drug Treatment Program special projects director. Newcombe rejoined the Dodger organization in the late 1970s and served as the team’s Director of Community Affairs. In March 2009, he was named special advisor to Dodgers chairman Frank McCourt.

Looking back, Newcombe said that alcohol may have cost him his place in the Hall of Fame: “I was only 34 [when he retired], but the alcohol had taken its toll. I think it shortened my major-league career by about six or seven years. I regret that I didn’t take better care of myself in the latter part of my career because I would like to have made the Hall of Fame, where I think I belong.”

On his website, Newcombe wrote: “What I have done after my baseball career and being able to help people with their lives and getting their lives back on track and they become human beings again – means more to me than all the things I did in baseball.”

After a long illness, Newcombe died at age 92 in Los Angeles in 2019 knowing that he had helped many of his fellow Dodgers get sober and live happier, more fulfilling lives.

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

Don Newcombe Used Alcoholic Tragedy To Heal Others Don Newcombe Used Alcoholic Tragedy To Heal Others

Biden Violates Take Care Clause

By Joe Guzzardi

Finally! Vice President Kamala Harris, during a recent interview, said that the effects of the Biden administration’s border policy won’t be realized “overnight.” Let’s calculate just how accurate Harris is. Between now and January 2024, and using 2021 when 2 million aliens crossed into the United States as a model, the Biden administration will likely allow 8 million illegal immigrants to unlawfully enter and settle in the U.S. The “effect” on local communities, schools, transportation and hospitals will be incalculable.

The 2 million total excludes what border agents refer to as “gotaways,” individuals who evaded Border Patrol capture and now roam the interior freely. Once inside the U.S., they may or may not be found, or eventually deported.

One example is Geraldo Pando, a multiple-times deportee with a 35-page criminal history that includes felonies committed in Colorado. He was arrested for vandalizing the U.S. Capitol Police headquarters and released. A week later he was defacing Washington’s Union Station with swastikas. The Biden administration’s soft-on-crime policy and tolerance of unlawful immigration prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement from processing Pando for deportation.

Official ICE statistics prove how passive the Biden administration is about deporting criminals. During 2021, according to a preliminary ICE release, only 55,590 immigration violators were removed. For comparison, deportations totaled 267,258 in FY 2019; under Biden, ICE removals have decreased by nearly 80 percent. Moreover, the first four months of FY 2021 occurred during the Trump presidency – a period when ICE removals were significantly higher. Approximately 28,000 of the FY 2021 removals of the 55,590 occurred while President Trump was still in office.

In the meantime, the worst criminal elements are laughing at the U.S. for its willingness to open its borders and to allow and encourage felonious behavior, including some U.S. citizen-perpetrated, that reaps billions in illicit cash. Wrong-doers, aware of the fortunes that can be gained through drug and human trafficking, devise increasingly clever schemes to smuggle aliens. Benign looking vehicles are the method of choice. Last year near the Texas border, agents seized a white ice cream truck with its flavors and Frito Pie advertised on the side. Inside, agents found 15 illegal immigrants, and two American citizens stacked on top of each other. Then in mid-February, agents found a child daycare van loaded with more than 20 Guatemalans. Agents also apprehended two aliens who had child sex offenses on their records and MS-13 gang members.

Nearly nonexistent enforcement and specifically the passivity of Biden, Harris and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have created a nation-altering crisis. Mayorkas acknowledged that he’s allowed border chaos to fester. In an audio recording which agents taped during their January meeting with Mayorkas at the Yuma Sector, the secretary said that his job has grown increasingly difficult at the start of this year, more so than 2021, which he admitted was “very, very difficult.” Mayorkas added that with worldwide migrants surging the border, he expects no pause in alien crossings. In fact, warmer spring weather could exacerbate border agents’ overload.

Border agents don’t want to hear Mayorkas confess to his poor performance; they’re abundantly aware of his multiple failures. The agents hoped for, but didn’t get, his pledge to allow them to return to their duties – protecting the homeland, not processing family units for release into the interior.

Biden hasn’t so much as hinted at a course change that might deviate from his administration’s repeated federal immigration law violations and its dismissal of the Constitution’s Take Care Clause, which means the President has a duty to ensure that U.S. laws are faithfully executed. The president’s sworn duty is to make sure that those around him faithfully execute the nation’s laws, a responsibility that Mayorkas has blatantly shirked.

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

Biden Violates Take Care Clause

Amnesty Always Solution for Zealots

By Joe Guzzardi

Soon after 9/11, immigration activists began a full-scale lobbying effort to encourage Congress to pass an illegal alien amnesty. Their stance was that if illegal aliens received lawful permanent residency, then they would, in the advocates’ terminology, “come out of the shadows.” In the end, the narrative continued, newly legalized aliens would become citizens, embrace the American way, and those that once harbored ill-will against the United States, like the 9/11 terrorists, would eventually assimilate.

Amnesty just months after 9/11 was, on its face, an impossible-to-sell idea, mainly because most of the 9/11 perpetrators were not “in the shadows,” but legally present. In his report, “The Open Door: How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered the United States, 1993-2001,” Steven A. Camarota found that at the time they committed their crimes, 16 terrorists of the 48 total involved, directly or indirectly, were on temporary visas, mostly tourist visas; 17 were Lawful Permanent Residents or naturalized U.S. citizens, and 12 were illegal aliens.

But amnesty is like the proverbial cork; right after it’s submerged into water, the cork pops back up. In the more than two decades since 9/11, amnesties large and small have been defeated, but swiftly reappeared in other bills. Some amnesties have been introduced in Congress, and were significant in their scope: the 2005 McCain-Kennedy bill and the 2013 Gang of Eight bill. Although heavily promoted as bipartisan and reformative, both nevertheless died in Congress. The most recent amnesty effort wasn’t as straightforward as the previous two. Although amnesty wasn’t advertised as its primary feature, Build Back Better still would have granted the biggest mass pardon in history, about 6.5 million aliens, and would cost taxpayers about $111 billion.

For today, BBB in its massive fiscal totality is stalled. Without missing a beat, however, the amnesty-or-bust crowd is back to work with another far-fetched angle that it should be embarrassed to advance. Their proposed solution to stall raging inflation: press on with BBB’s amnesty via a parole provision that would grant work authorization to illegal immigrants. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) tweeted that “a comprehensive immigration reform bill,” code words for amnesty, “would help cut inflation.” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has spent his 30-plus years in Congress voting “yea” for the majority of the immigration expansion bills put before him, agrees. When reporters asked Durbin to share his thoughts about the new amnesty pitch, the Senate Judiciary Chair said: “Oh, most certainly … If there are more workers filling those jobs, it’s deflationary.”

Clemson University energy and sustainability professor Mark Thies wrote a Newsweek opinion piece titled “The Democrats Plan to Fix Inflation: Squeeze Blue-Collar Americans” that chronicled the multiple fallacies in Democrats’ talking points, reiterated year after year but never proven, that immigration benefits Americans. This time around, Democrats illogically argue that more immigration and amnesty will help curb the 40-year high inflation rate that’s crippling the middle class. While it’s true that importing more foreign workers who will become U.S. consumers grows the economy and increases GDP, it’s equally true and much more consequential that more foreign-born consumers don’t increase per-capita GDP. Fundamental economic theory proves that the overwhelming majority of immigration-driven increases in economic activity goes to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and other compensation. Immigration doesn’t benefit the native-born population.

Should the Democrats’ amnesty vision come true, every paroled or amnestied immigrant will receive lifetime valid work authorization that will enable him to compete with or displace an American worker. If BBB provides millions more work-authorized immigrants, then also add the 1 million lawful permanent residents who arrive annually, the roughly 750,000 temporary guest workers, the asylum and refugee arrivals, and the conclusion is that the U.S. has an immigrant labor overage at a time when millions of Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Not yet considered are last year’s 2 million illegal immigrant border surgers who will stay in the U.S. permanently, and will eventually get employment authorization or, alternatively, enter the underground economy. More cheap labor is a constant threat to working Americans’ job security, inconsequential to congressional Democrats.

Independent and undecided voters wonder what’s happened to the traditional Democratic Party that once prided itself as working Americans’ staunchest ally. The Democratic Party of old is long gone, and today is willfully determined to undermine U.S. citizens’ economic best interests in order to advance the elite donor class. With the 2022 mid-term elections less than nine months away, analysts wonder whether Democrats will shift to the middle to woo the swing voters they’ll need in order to keep their congressional majority. So far, no indication has surfaced that a course change is in the immediate future. So that all Americans may prosper, the U.S. needs Democrats of the mindset from an earlier era to return to the fold. As President Theodore Roosevelt often said, if federal policies don’t work for everyone, they don’t work for anyone.

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

Amnesty Always Solution for Zealots Amnesty Always Solution for Zealots

Texas Gov Race Is Ground Zero In Immigration Battle

By Joe Guzzardi

Texas will hold its gubernatorial primary March 1, with a runoff scheduled for May 24, if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote. The question that Texas voters will face on Election Day, Nov. 8, is whether a Democrat, likely to be two-time loser Robert O’Rourke, with a failed 2018 Senate bid and 2020 presidential campaign run that went nowhere, and an open border apologist who favors Second Amendment restrictions, can win in Texas, illegal immigration’s ground zero.

The first hurdle for incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott is getting past the primary. No incumbent Texas governor lost his or her – Ann Richards (D) 1991 to 1995 – party’s nomination since 1978, when Gov. Dolph Briscoe (D) lost to then-Attorney General John Hill (D). Abbott, however, is facing strong primary challengers. They are Texas State Senator and real estate developer Don Huffines and Allen West, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant who represented Florida’s 22^nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013. Until he resigned to launch his gubernatorial campaign, West served as the Republican Party of Texas’ chairman. Huffines and West have criticized Abbott for his coronavirus restrictions that included mask mandates and business shutdowns that they view as unconstitutional, and an unnecessary obstruction to Texans’ freedom.

Abbott’s performance ratings are weak. The Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston and the University of Texas both found that 40 percent of Texans have an unfavorable opinion of the sitting governor. Nevertheless, Abbott is favored to prevail, and will probably meet O’Rourke in November, a match up that, because of their starkly different immigration positions, should favor the incumbent.

O’Rourke knows that in Texas immigration enforcement will be a game breaker, and he’s choosing his language judiciously. The O’Rourke of today may have a tough time escaping the O’Rourke that pursued the 2020 presidential nomination. Posted on his website, O’Rourke wrote that he wants Texas to have a “legal, orderly system of immigration and uphold our country’s asylum laws.” Texans recognize these words as code for amnesty, an O’Rourke goal that’s unchanged from 21 months ago.

At an April 2019 Iowa town hall, the former U.S. representative said that giving amnesty to all 12 to 25 million illegal aliens will make American citizens – and specifically, the Angel Families whose loved ones have been murdered by criminal aliens – “demonstrably safer.” O’Rourke’s premise that once aliens “get right with the law…come into the light of day [and presumably out of the ever-present shadows]… and contribute to the success of the country…” then everything will be fine. These platitudes have never been proven true.

On border issues, O’Rourke, because of his past support for amnesty, and his failure to meaningfully criticize illegal immigration, has boxed himself in. Abbott, even though his primary opponents argue that he should do more to stop the illegal immigrant border surge, has poured hundreds of millions to strengthen border security that includes sending Department of Public Safety troops and the National Guard to the Rio Grande. Hispanic voters, a key bloc, approve of Abbott’s immigration actions; 45 percent gave Abbott an approval rating on immigration, but only 37 percent gave Biden, from whom O’Rourke will have trouble distancing himself, an immigration thumbs-up. O’Rourke will not ask Biden to join him on the campaign trail, and said that his campaign will not be about anyone outside of Texas. He will, however, accept out-of-state donations. The O’Rourke coffers have nearly $9 million as of the most recent tally, about $40 million less than Abbott.

Other issues will play an important role as the campaigns of Abbott and O’Rourke shift into high gear: Texas’ power grid, a woman’s right to choose and inflation are also important to Texans.

The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas Tyler poll has Abbott with a commanding 11-point lead. But running behind early in the game isn’t O’Rourke’s greatest concern. The border remains open and chaotic. Based on the 2021 statistics, between today and early November, hundreds of thousands of new illegal immigrants will cross into Texas, an albatross that even the most skilled campaigner can’t talk his way out of.

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

Texas Gov Race Is Ground Zero In Immigration Battle Texas Gov Race Is Ground Zero In Immigration Battle

America Competes Act Another Attack On American Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

Nothing stops the push by Congress for more immigration – not 9/11, not the mortgage meltdown and Wall Street crisis, not dismal Bureau of Labor Statistics job reports and not COVID-19. Despite the fact that about 1 million new lawful permanent residents get work authorization each year, that about 750,000 guest workers arrive annually in a typical year and that dozens of types of nonimmigrant visas include employment permission, Congress is never satisfied.
 
Congress insists, predictably and tediously, that without more foreign-born labor, the economy will collapse and small businesses will vanish. These baseless claims, consistently proven false, are repeated year after year after year.
 
Example: In 2017, mostly at the horse racing industry’s behest, the Senate introduced the Save our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act, and the House introduced companion legislation, Strengthen Employment and Seasonal Opportunities Now Act. The bills, with bipartisan support, predicted that without more H-2B nonagricultural visas, horse racing, as fans know the “Sport of Kings,” might become extinct. But, four years later, the Kentucky Derby and smaller races at other nationwide tracks continue to draw large, revenue-generating crowds.

Example: Last year, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Chair of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship and immigration lawyer, introduced the Let Immigrants Kick Start Employment Act that would create a new temporary visa for founders of start-up ventures. In her press release, Lofgren said that more immigration leads to more American jobs, an often-made, but misleading claim. Although Lofgren’s bill went nowhere, Silicon Valley recorded record profits in 2021, and The New York Timespredicted that titans Google, Apple, Microsoft and other tech giants will be rolling in dough for years to come. From its July 2021 story: “The combined stock market valuation of Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook increased by about 70 percent to more than $10 trillion. That is roughly the size of the entire U.S. stock market in 2002. Apple alone has enough cash in its coffers to give $600 to every person in the United States.”
 
The latest assault on American workers is an immigration train wreck coyly called the America COMPETES Act of 2022. Boiled down to the bill’s most harmful elements, the America COMPETES Act would:
 

1. Create a W nonimmigrant visa program for foreign investors of start-ups and entrepreneurs, their families and so-called but undefined essential foreign workers who work for them, also allowing their family members to receive work permits.
2. Create a one-year path to an unlimited number of Green Cards for any W visa holder who meets certain investment and ownership stake requirements.
3. Create an unlimited number of Green Cards for foreign citizens who hold a doctoral degree from a U.S. institution of higher learning or an equivalent degree from a foreign university.
4. Create a five-year program that creates 5,000 Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) yearly for Hong Kong residents, amounting to an additional 25,000 Green Cards over the five-year period.
5. Authorize an unlimited refugee/asylee program for certain Hong Kong residents.
6. Change existing law to treat Hong Kong as a separate state from China in determining per-country limits for existing Green Card categories.
7. Grant Temporary Protected Status with work permission for Hong Kong residents currently in the U.S., regardless of their existing immigration status which may include unlawfully present status.

 
Under the guise of promoting American innovation, the act’s hodgepodge of vague language makes almost anything possible. One thing is certain – the America COMPETES Act will massively increase legal immigration, flood the labor market, make job searches for Americans in all sectors more difficult, and have an adverse effect on recent U.S. college graduates hoping to begin their careers.
 
The America COMPETES Act intentionally harms U.S. citizens, but will be a bonanza for arriving foreign nationals, employers addicted to cheap labor and Silicon Valley multimillionaires. No greater gap exists between voters and Congress than on immigration policy. The thoroughly awful, destructive America COMPETES Act is one of the most powerful examples of why the immigration chasm is so wide.
 
 
A PFIR analyst, Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

America Competes Act Another Attack On American Workers

Teenage Girl Whiffs Ruth, Gehrig, Fact Or Fiction?

By Joe Guzzardi
 

More than 80 years ago, 17-year-old lefty sidewinder and distaff Jackie Mitchell struck out on seven pitches baseball’s powerful sluggers, the New York Yankees’ Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Historians rank Ruth and Gehrig as baseball’s most fearsome back-to-back slugging tandem. On April 2, 1931, the impossible-to-believe feat, a teenage girl whiffing the two home run bashers, happened in front of 4,000 incredulous fans. The following day, TheNew York Times in its headline story “Ruth and Gehrig Struck Out by Girl Pitcher” confirmed the accomplishment of Mitchell from the minor league Chattanooga Lookouts.

Eight decades later, the time has again come to determine whether Ruth and Gehrig were part of a hoax that the Lookouts owner and notorious prankster Joe Engel arranged—he had once traded a player for a turkey, and then served the carved-up bird to local sportswriters – or whether Mitchell had legitimately whiffed the two greats.

Readers, with history’s help, can make their own decision. Ordinarily, a 17-year-old, female or male, would be impossibly overmatched against Ruth and Gehrig. To be sure, Ruth, age 37, was approaching his career’s end. Still, Ruth hit 49 homers the previous season and Gehrig, 41. But Mitchell had impressive credentials of her own. She was an all-around athlete who starred in basketball in the winter, and excelled at baseball in the spring. More than anything, however, Mitchell learned about pitching from her neighbor, Hall of Fame hurler Dazzy Vance – called Dazzy because his opponents said that his pitches dazzled them.

Vance had developed a remarkable curriculum vitae of his own. Pitching for the consistently terrible Brooklyn Robins, Vance led the National League in strikeouts for seven consecutive seasons, 1922 to 1928, and won 20 games three times. Vance taught Mitchell how to throw the drop ball, now called a sinker.

The Yankees were traveling north for their Opening Day game against the Red Sox, and had scheduled two exhibition games against the Lookouts. With Mitchell under contract, and with game one – hint, hint – an April 1 Fools Day contest rained out, the April 2 game began ominously for the Lookouts. Starting pitcher Clyde Barfoot gave up a quick double and a single. Manager Bert Niehoff signaled to the bullpen for portsider Mitchell to face left-handed batting Ruth and Gehrig, the trusted lefty versus lefty pitching strategy at play. Mitchell’s first delivery to Ruth was a ball followed by two swinging strikes, and a called strike three. Ruth threw his bat to the ground in – hint, hint, again – feigned disgust. Gehrig went down even easier than Ruth – three atypically wild swings at Mitchell’s offerings. After Mitchell walked the third slugger in the Yankees’ Murders’ Row line up, Tony Lazzeri, her day was done; the Yankees beat up on the Lookouts, 14-4.

The Times account provides some valuable insight into the goings on. Ruth, the newspaper wrote, “performed his role very ably,” and Gehrig “took three hefty swings as his contribution to the occasion.” Unsurprisingly Mitchell recalls her performance differently. Interviewed in 1987, Mitchell said, “Why, hell, they were trying, damn right.” Then, Mitchell added testily, “Hell, better [unidentified] batters than them couldn’t hit me.”

Readers trying to determine whether young “lipstick wielding” Mitchell, as one account referred to her, struck out Ruth and Gehrig on the up and up should remember that the Bambino was to his fans the consummate pleasure-giver and crowd-pleaser. He joked with them from his right field position, waved greetings as he drove through New York’s streets, visited hospitals spontaneously, signed every shred of paper, programs, baseballs, menus and match book covers put in front of him. Ruth knew that he had nothing to gain if he hit a tape measure 500-foot home run against a teenage girl and local darling. And Gehrig, who wasn’t going to show up Ruth, had nothing to prove either. Baseball loves a good story, and Mitchell’s tale filled the bill.

In 1933, after then-MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis voided Mitchell’s contract, she signed with the House of David barnstorming team. But Mitchell quickly grew tired of its non-baseball antics that included playing games while astride donkeys and retired to join her father’s Chattanooga optometry office.

In the end, no one can dispute that Mitchell faced three Hall of Fame greats – Ruth, Gehrig and Lazzeri – and struck out two of them on seven pitches. No pitcher can say the same, and, best of all, Mitchell’s once-in-a lifetime story is, even if orchestrated, 100 percent verifiable fact.

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

Teenage Girl Whiffs Ruth, Gehrig, Fact Or Fiction?

AOC vs Schumer Election Battle Looming?

By Joe Guzzardi

Two sure signs that the 2022 mid-term campaigning has begun: candidates’ television spots are bombarding viewers, and the Capitol Hill rumor mill is grinding away. One of the most intriguing bits of gossip is that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may challenge Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer this year, or wait until 2024 to take on the more vulnerable, ineffective Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Ocasio-Cortez versus Schumer would present a fascinating match up, a media dream come true, with the upstart second-term representative having little to lose. First, consider that Ocasio-Cortez has experience in toppling the Democratic establishment. In the 2018 primary, Ocasio-Cortez drubbed 20-year congressional veteran and incumbent Joe Crowley, then the House Democratic Caucus chairman, the fourth ranking Democrat and a favorite to become Speaker.

Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, won 57 percent of the vote. Her winning campaign four years ago could foreshadow trouble for Schumer as the message she’d send to New Yorkers would highlight the differences between the incumbent and her. Ocasio-Cortez repeatedly said that upset wins like hers represent what happens when people vote… “they had the money, we had people.”

For Ocasio-Cortez, Schumer represents an inviting target, should she choose to seek the Senate. In 2018, she ran as a woman, a young person, a working-class champion, a fresh face, an unabashed liberal and a person of color. Schumer is male, old, elitist and white. Along the campaign trail, Ocasio-Cortez piled up endorsements from national progressive groups that would elude Schumer.

Few in the Senate are more establishment than Schumer, best friend to Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Schumer’s only jobs since he graduated from Harvard Law School have been in government, and he’s become a powerful, but overly familiar, not particularly admired, boring, dour, staid figure in New York politics for nearly 50 years. First in the State Assembly in 1975, the U.S. House from 1991 to 1999, and the U.S. Senate from 1999 through today, Schumer is yesterday’s news.

On Election Day 2022, Schumer will be two weeks shy of 72; Ocasio-Cortez, 33. The woke vote, the 5 million or so New Yorkers between the ages of 18 to 34, and the fed-up vote would go overwhelmingly to Ocasio-Cortez who knows how to reach younger people through social media and her 13 million Twitter followers. Schumer’s Twitter followers, on the other hand, are 40,000.

Schumer’s approval ratings are the second lowest of his senate career, with only 41 percent of his constituents giving him an “excellent” or “good” score, and 29 percent rating him as “poor.” The polling results have more bad news for Schumer. Among Ocasio-Cortez’s key youthful voters, 58 percent said Schumer was doing a “poor” or, at best, “fair” job.

The next move is Ocasio-Cortez’s. She’s been coy about her intentions, and when questioned directly about challenging Schumer, she’s responded evasively. Ocasio-Cortez’s pat answer is that she hasn’t considered a Senate run, but she hasn’t ruled it out either. “We shall see” is her favorite dodge. Much of Ocasio-Cortez’s future may depend on Schumer’s ability to bring home President Biden’s major legislative agenda, currently badly stalled. Whether Schumer retains his seat, or Ocasio-Cortez upends him, the legislative vote tally will be unchanged. Both are reliably left, and can be counted on to vote straight progressive on social issues.

Ocasio-Cortez’s emergence into the national spotlight and her visibility as a viable U.S. Senate candidate show how dramatically New York’s politics have shifted in just two and a half decades. Within living memory, Republican Gov. George Pataki served three consecutive terms, 1995 to 2006, and defeated incumbent Democrat Mario Cuomo to win his first gubernatorial race. Conservative Sen. Alfonse D’Amato preceded Schumer. Gillibrand, when she served in the U.S. House from 2006 to 2008, was a blue dog Democrat who opposed a 2007 state-level proposal to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and voted for legislation that would withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities harboring illegal aliens. Once the junior senator came under Schumer’s wing, however, she voted the straight Democratic party line on immigration.

Ocasio-Cortez covets higher political office and has demonstrated the wherewithal to achieve her goals. Some analysts speculate that Ocasio-Cortez will skip a Senate run, and make a presidential bid in 2024. A look at the 24 failed 2020 Democratic candidates makes her run appear possible, if not probable.

In politics, the nine months between today and November 8 are an eternity. Among other Democratic failures on crime, education, affordable housing and COVID-19, New York voters may have grown tired of illegal aliens, including underage migrants, being flown, under cover of darkness, from the Southwest border into their state where they will become taxpayers’ burdens.

A change is coming to New York’s U.S. Senate representation. The question that will face voters is whether the change will represent an improvement in their lives or another step backward toward full-on California status.

A PFIR analyst, Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Find him at joeguzzardi.substack.com.

AOC vs Schumer Election Battle Looming? AOC vs Schumer Election Battle Looming?

Border Failure Thought Success By Biden Gang

By Joe Guzzardi

Getting a dinner reservation at Per Se, New York’s restaurant of choice for the city’s royalty, is more difficult than entering the U.S. illegally. The wait for Per Se, the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group dining experience, can exceed three months, but border crossers just walk right on in to the U.S.; neither reservations nor identification is required. Actually, Illegal aliens have it better than Per Se diners. Border surgers don’t have to pay a $2,000 tab, including wine and tax, for dinner for two. Just the opposite for aliens. The free ride begins once they step inside the U.S.

To get their new-in-America lives started, the aliens only have to peacefully surrender to immigration border officials. Although the agents are highly trained to defend and protect the U.S. border, the new normal under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is for aliens to turn themselves in to Customs and Border Protection agents who process and release them into the American interior. Then, they become the responsibility of  federal, state and local taxpayers who foot the bill for a bountiful array of affirmative benefits.

An extraordinary example of how the Biden administration has abdicated its border responsibilities occurred Jan. 22 when federally charted buses dropped off dozens of illegal alien single adult males in Brownsville, Texas, where they were seen getting into taxis headed for the airport to travel to Miami, Atlanta and Houston. No one has the slightest idea who they are. The only certain thing is the taxpayers, who have no vote in federal immigration policy, are funding their trips. In December 2020, agents reported more than 178,000 encounters at the southern border, the highest December on record. Convicted sex offenders and other criminals were among the 2 million worldwide migrants who illegally entered in 2021.

Several think tanks, each doing independent research, calculated that taxpayers subsidize illegal immigrant health care costs annually to the tune of $18.5 billion, and public education, $60 billion. Unaccompanied minors crossing the border in record numbers from Mexico, and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, have created a budget-draining cost to public schools in the form of Limited English Proficiency classes the schools are federally mandatedto offer.

Illegal immigration, the unprecedented Biden-style 2022 version, can be analyzed two ways. Beyond the first, the dollar burden on taxpayers, lays the long-term negative consequences to U.S. sovereignty. Some analysts argue that illegal immigration helps the U.S. economy because the migrant workers are motivated and responsive to the country’s always-shifting needs – in agriculture, construction and hospitality. Those who benefit the most from illegal immigration, however, are the cheap labor-addicted employers who hire them, and the aliens who have relocated, often with spouses and children in tow. Except for corporate profiteers, Americans gain little.

The second and much less discussed consequence of illegal immigration is the dissolution of national sovereignty. Arguments about illegal immigration, good or bad, have persisted for decades. But never before has an administration been so brazenly craven in welcoming and catering to aliens. Of the 2 million illegal immigrants who entered last year, 45,000 were clandestinely flown from the border into the interior with some using their arrest warrants as identification to board commercial aircraft.

Mayorkas openly admits that his agency has “fundamentally changed,” meaning that he’s gutted Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and proudly eliminated worksite enforcement. Even though only Congress can make immigration law, Mayorkas also boasted that in the Biden administration illegal presence is no longer considered a criminal offense.

Texas U.S. Representatives Chip Roy and Michael Cloud have called for Mayorkas’ immediate impeachment. Roy and Cloud allege that Mayorkas has violated many laws in letter and spirit, and he has “undermined the rule of law, violated the Constitution, and placed the lives and inalienable rights of Americans in danger.”

Because Biden and his administration view the border calamity as a thundering success, Mayorkas may remain in office for as long as the president is in office, something that sovereign America cannot withstand if the historic nation is to survive. Mayorkas’ impeachment is the best solution.

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

Border Failure Thought Success By Biden Gang

Who Needs Congress? D.C.’s New Normal

By Joe Guzzardi

In a late Friday afternoon announcement, the Department of Homeland Security expanded the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, STEM, Optional Practical Training, STEM OPT. Now, F-1 student visa OPT candidates can have degrees in bioenergy, general forestry, forest resources production and management, human-centered technology design, cloud computing, anthrozoology, climate science, earth systems science, economics and computer science, environmental geosciences, geobiology, geography and environmental studies, mathematical economics, mathematics, atmospheric and oceanic science, general data science, general data analytics, business analytics, data visualization, financial analytics, other data analytics, industrial and organizational psychology, and social sciences, research methodology, and quantitative methods. The complete 22-career long list is intended to give readers the full scope of its dire consequences to U.S. students and professionals, not to bog them down.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a press release and posted a notice in the Federal Register, but the news barely made a blip in the media or even on business channels. STEM OPT’s expansion, however, is significant since the thousands of new foreign-born workers entering the labor pool will adversely affect employed U.S. tech workers or recent U.S. STEM graduates whose prospective careers could be jeopardized.

“Practical training” is a purposely deceptive phrase; in reality, “training,” defined in real terms, means work authorization, a benefit that wasn’t included for F-1 student visas in the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. Students were expected to return home when they completed their courses of study. In a major and legally questionable departure from the INA, 70 years later, the biggest guest worker program is the F-1 student visa holder.

Joining DHS in making job searches harder for young Americans, the State Department also did its hurtful best. State doubled the time period for J-1 visa travelers, allegedly in the U.S. on a cultural exchange visit, from 18 to 36 months. Investigative journalists have extensively reported that J-1 visa holders, far from participating in cultural exchange, are often employed at jobs Americans will do. The visa is used to import workers whose professions range from au pair to medical doctor.

DHS’ unexpected proclamation offers insight into how today’s federal government works: wealthy elitists team up with high-ranking administration officials at exclusive functions, then lobby for special considerations that will benefit them while falsely claiming America will be the winner. Finally, the insiders, operating in secret, do an end run around Congress to put their destructive policies into place without the appropriate congressional committee debate or vote.

In 2008, OPT mushroomed from a one-year program that took effect after students graduated to 29 months. During a Georgetown cocktail party, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates complained to then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that Congress’ refusal to authorize more H-1B visas above the existing cap impaired Silicon Valley’s ability to maximize its profits. At that time, 65,000 new H-1B visas were available, with an additional 20,000 visas provided to holders of U.S. university-earned master’s degrees or higher. In 2015, the Obama administration, again without congressional approval, increased the OPT F-1 visa overstay authorization period to 36 months.

Rich, powerful and well-connected Gates and Chertoff proved to be a combination that, when they set out to achieve their mutual goal to provide Silicon Valley with more cheap labor, left U.S. tech workers out in the cold. Then-President George W. Bush, an immigration advocate, could have interceded on behalf of Americans, but chose not to.

That’s the new Washington, D.C. normal – agencies make and enforce regulations as law without congressional approval, and the administration ignores the unlawful procedures, pretending that all is well in the nation’s capital. As for displaced U.S. tech workers or struggling graduates, thanks to DHS’ open-borders Mayorkas, U.S. specialists who studied in the 22 STEM fields are left to fend for themselves. Mayorkas realizes the harm he’s inflicting on the nation’s prospective white-collar workers, and he knows that Americans object to prioritizing foreign workers. In his tweet that announced the STEM OPT expansion, Mayorkas purposely omitted “foreign student” to create the false impression that DHS is investing in domestic STEM talent.

OPT has been in litigation for more than a decade, challenging whether OPT holders who are no longer students can legally be allowed to work. For all those years, U.S. tech workers have taken the brunt of the government’s illegal ploys that are used against them indiscriminately to give foreign nationals an advantage in the high-skilled labor market.

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

Who Needs Congress? D.C.’s New Normal

More Foreign Workers Coming To USA

By Joe Guzzardi

During the peak days of coronavirus, Amazon delivery trucks were a familiar sight in neighborhoods across America. Amazon’s logo is a smiley face arrow pointing from “A” to “Z” indicating that the company offers customers products that range from those with names that begin with the letter “a” and all through to the letter “z,” in other words, everything. Shopping at Amazon, the smiling arrow promises, will make consumers happy.

What began in 1994 in Jeff Bezos’ garage as an online bookstore, then called “Cadabra” and with initial earnings of $20,000, Amazon is now recognized worldwide as the place to shop for products as diverse as AAA batteries or zinc tablets, and have them promptly delivered to your front door quickly. Today, Amazon’s market cap is $1.7 trillion. As of January 2022, Bezos is the world’s richest man with a net worth of $195 billion. Amazon is a great American success story. If only Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos could use their billions-strong financial strength to share their wealth by hiring more Americans and paying them fairly instead of opting for lower-cost overseas workers, their accomplishments might be more broadly hailed.

But when Amazon wants to hire workers, it too often relies on the insidious H-1B, guest worker employment-based visa to fill its needs. In fiscal years 2020 and 2021, at 6,182, Amazon received more approvals for H-1B visas than any other corporation; Microsoft, Google and IBM received 1,200 or more. Worse news for U.S. tech workers is that the decline rate for H-1B visas has, under President Joe Biden, dropped to its lowest level in history which means that more tech jobs will go to Indian and Chinese nationals instead of U.S. citizens.

The National Foundation for American Policy calculated that only 4 percent of petitions were denied in FY 2021, down from 13 percent in FY 2020 and down from the high of 24 percent in FY 2018. NFAP wrote that the status of many H-1B extensions was reviewed under a more restrictive standard than the Trump administration. Those tighter guidelines gave officers at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services more discretion to require additional proof that entry-level computer programming jobs qualify as a “specialty occupation,” a basic requirement for receiving an H-1B visa.

Courts later ruled that the Trump era memo was unlawful. NFAP also wrote that “employers and attorneys have credited USCIS Director Ur Jaddou and the Biden administration for rescinding the October 2017 memo.” Big business, lawyers and the Americans Last Biden White House, all unlimited immigration advocates, hailed Jaddou’s intervention, and defended the H-1B revision as helpful to corporations struggling to find what they term as “high-skilled” or the “best and brightest” employees, myths that have been perpetuated for decades.

The Census Bureau’s 2019 Community Survey, Single-Year Estimates found that among the 50 million employed college graduates ages 25 to 64 in 2019, 37 percent reported a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering but only 14 percent worked in a science, technology, engineering or math-related (STEM) occupations. U.S. tech workers are plentiful, but employers have to seek them out.

Through a series of loopholes, Congress has enabled H-1B visa holders to, instead of the initial six-year time cap on their visas – one three-year period followed by a three-year renewal – remain to work indefinitely, and become U.S. citizens. Because of the “dual intent” provision, H-1B visas holders can now displace American workers, and are rewarded with citizenship. Stated differently, admitted under the guise of being temporary, H-1B holders can become the most permanent of residents, a U.S. citizen.

The decline in H-1B denials trend is guaranteed to continue during Biden’s remaining three years in the White House. The president’s critics wonder why he’s so steadfastly determined to harms both high- and low-skilled U.S. workers. The border influx of mostly limited-skilled and under-educated migrants harm Americans at the lower end of the economic spectrum, while, at the same time, loosening the H-1B visa standards puts college-educated Americans behind the eight-ball when it comes to securing a white-collar job.

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

More Foreign Workers Coming To USA

More Foreign Workers Coming To USA