Category: Joe Guzzardi

Virtue Signaling MLB Spends $$ In DR But Not In Poor America

By Joe Guzzardi

With a single stroke of his pen, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred rewrote a century of baseball history. Before the ink dried, the Pittsburgh Crawfords’ and the Homestead Grays’ Josh Gibson replaced Ty Cobb as baseball’s all-time batting champion, took over Babe Ruth’s career slugging average record, and is now officially the last player to hit over .400 in a season. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when baseball’s suits, a 17-man, John Thorn-led commission, met six times to evaluate, despite incomplete data, incorporating Negro Leagues’ statistics into the existing record book. Notwithstanding Sabermetricians’ best efforts, they only located about 75% of Negro Leagues’ box scores.

The commission marginalized icons Cobb, Ruth and Ted Williams. Cobb, the former career batting average leader, won 12 titles during his 11,440 at bats compared to Gibson’s 2,164. Displaced also is Ruth, who amassed his .690 slugging title in four-times Gibson’s plate appearances, 10,628 to 2,526. Yet Gibson with his .718 mark, post-Manfred’s edict, now holds Ruth’s old title. MLB’s ill-conceived revisions anointed Gibson as the last player to hit over .400 in a single season, .466 in 1943, which displaced Williams’ .406 in 1941. Gibson did not have enough at bats to qualify for the batting title. As ESPN’s black Senior Writer Howard Bryant described Manfred’s ahistorical pronouncement: “The decision was met with great applause, but in addition to being reconciliatory, it was also a spectacular display of historical distortion and institutional arrogance.” An unanswered question that Manfred left hanging: if Gibson established records in 1943, will the April 15th annual Jackie Robinson Day celebration of his 1947 breaking of MLB’s color line be canceled? Confused fans should consider the source. Manfred is a labor lawyer, not a baseball historian

More statistical revisions will come soon; the commission is still digging into decades of Negro Leagues’ games that involve hundreds of players. Questions about which games and feats should count will be endless. Satchel Paige’s 50 no-hitters, the total he insists he hurled, might replace Nolan Ryan’s seven as the new career record. Anything is possible. The commissioners have their computers and their new-fangled analytical methods. But Monte Irvin, who played for the Newark Eagles and the New York Giants, noted the obvious: unless the players compete in the same league, no meaningful parallels can be drawn. Irvin’s on-the-record opinion is that the Negro Leagues, because the teams had shallower pitching staffs, can’t compare to the majors.

Manfred claims that his baseball ideological history makes amends for the terrible biases that kept talented black players out of the major leagues because of their skin color. “Correcting an injustice,” is how Manfred attempted to explain the inexplicable. Beyond the clear fact that the leagues were separate entities, the inherent suggestion that MLB’s stamp of approval validates the Negro Leagues is an insult to Gibson, Paige, Irvin, Robinson and hundreds of others. The Negro Leagues do not need validation.

The commissioner’s gesture does little tangible for the black players’ families that suffered through decades of the shameful treatment and does even less for today’s black kids yearning to reach the major leagues. If MLB wants to do something productive for black youths, it should build a network of baseball camps like those it has spent hundreds of millions to develop in the Dominican Republic. Envision this: Manfred summons the thirty MLB owners and demands that, since baseball is an $12 billion industry, part of that revenue should be allocated to developing U.S. black players.

Originally, MLB promoted the camps as an option to a life spent in the Dominican sugar cane fields. For the few Dominicans who made the big leagues, they could send money home to lift their families out of poverty. But MLB was the big winner because teams could sign several prospects for the same cost to ink one American player. MLB originally paid its academy players little, $600 per month, but the cash plus a green card that would give prospects and their families legal status in the U.S. was too inviting to pass up.

The Pittsburgh Pirates built its first Dominican academy in 2009 and has added to the 52-acre facility every year thereafter. Pirates’ camps have multiple playing fields, cafeterias, classrooms and the most complete weight room among the camps. Pirates’ director of international development Hector Morales called the facility “unparalleled.” Nothing remotely similar exists in the U.S. And while the Dominican Republic offers the advantage of year-round good weather, determined multi-millionaire owners could work around climate handicaps by training in Florida, Texas or California and making use of indoor facilities during the winter months. Owners lack the will to find raw U.S. talent and develop it. The California Winter League, baseball’s first integrated league, played from 1900 to the mid-1940s. The greatest baseball stars competed in the CWL — -Walter Johnson, Cool Papa Bell, Andy Pafko, Bob Elliot, and Jackie Robinson, among others.

Miserly billionaire owners point to the NCAA baseball teams as the best source for future stars. But few blacks can afford college. Consider how Pirates’ great Andrew McCutcheon viewed the challenges for increased black players’ participation in MLB In his 2015 Post-Gazette op-ed, “I Could Have Been Left Behind.” McCutcheon wrote about growing up in Central Florida, poor and unable to get rides to the big showcase tournaments. He envied Dominican players that MLB could, because of the local camps, sign, develop, and nurture. When Cutch wrote his op-ed, Josh Harrison was his only American black teammate. In the decade since Cutch’s op-ed, the only change is that Ke’Bryan Hayes has replaced Harrison as one of two other Pirates’ American blacks. Florida-based The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found that African American players represented just 6.2% of players on 2023 MLB opening day rosters down from 7.2% in 2022. The totals were the lowest since the study began in 1991, when 18% of MLB players were African American. Dominican players comprise about 30% of MLB’s active rosters.

McCutcheon suggested that MLB build camps, scout high schools, Pony League, Nebraska’s cornfields and Chicago’s South Side. If MLB wants to “correct an injustice” to African Americans, as Manfred insists, give them an equal opportunity to earn the lucrative contracts that abound in baseball today. Every year, owners wring their hands and shed crocodile tears about its shortage of black players. The penurious owners should put their money where their mouths are. Right now, their money is in the Dominican Republic. The inescapable conclusion: MLB owners use the billions their teams generate from ticket, merchandise, and TV revenue to fund Dominican academies whose players that will eventually displace American kids on the baseball diamond.

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

Virtue Signaling MLB Spends $$ In DR But Not In Poor America

Harris Would Proudly Continue Unvetted Immigration

By Joe Guzzardi

When U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) released to media outlets Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s shocking statistics about convicted illegal alien criminals that include murderers and rapists set free into the interior, the damning data’s publication coincided exactly with Vice-President Kamala Harris’ September 27 photo-op at the border. The two-term representative received the information from ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner who was responding to a letter Gonzales sent to President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that expressed his concern about at-risk Americans who live in sanctuary cites. Gonzales also requested detailed information about the illegal immigrants on ICE’s docket to learn how many criminals are being released into the nation’s communities. After reading the statistics that Lechleitner included in his reply, Gonzales said that ICE’s findings are “beyond disturbing” and he vowed to fund the agency with sufficient resources to remove criminal illegal immigrants. Gonzales also demanded that Biden and Harris clean up “the mess their failed policies have created.”

“Beyond disturbing” is the year’s greatest understatement. As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 illegal aliens with criminal histories on ICE’s national docket including 13,099 criminally convicted murders. Gonzales, a U.S. Navy veteran, and Master Chief who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, represents Texas’ 23rd district which includes more than eight hundred miles along the U.S./Mexico border. Gonzales’ congressional voting record reflects solid grades on legislation that strengthens border security and interior immigration law enforcement. Gonzales recently secured over $12 million in federal grant funding through Operation Stonegarden for 17 Texas counties and two American Indian tribes. Operation Stonegarden, Gonzales explained, helps front line Border Patrol agents curtail cartel activity and related border security efforts.

Meanwhile down in Douglas County, Arizona, just as Gonzales released the gruesome ICE statistics, Harris connected with border patrol agents and local law enforcement officials. Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels told reporters that his frustration has mounted steadily during the three and a half years since Harris’ border czar appointment. Over the last 31 months, Dannels’ office jailed 3,762 illegal immigrants for border-related crimes that cost his county $12.5 million. Dannels made multiple efforts to meet with Biden and Harris, but they always rebuffed him.

Dannels has seen heat-related desert deaths and other tragedies, but the White House and Congress has “intellectually turned [their] backs on us. That’s frustrating to me.” Harris, for the umpteenth time, chided her opponent Donald Trump for allegedly scotching the so-called bipartisan border bill that President Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats have falsely claimed would solve the border crisis. Arizona, the only battleground state that borders Mexico, contended with a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Harris pledged to, if elected, revive the bipartisan border bill “and proudly sign it into law.” On multiple other occasions and on her website, Harris has pledged to offer “a pathway to citizenship” to millions of illegal aliens, an amnesty that Americans have, for decades, rejected.

Voters beware! The failed bipartisan bill that Harris praises would have, among its other flaws, codified continued mass immigration and done nothing to end parole abuse or scrap the illegal CBP-One app. The bill’s final version only required the Department of Homeland Security to tighten the processing and releasing of border crossers when a staggering 5,000 illegal aliens per day, averaged over 7 days, are encountered. The White House and DHS know how unpopular CBP-One is so they paired up to give concerned voters a head-fake. Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it would not allow 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who arrived on CBP-One to extend their two-year parole period, a benefit previously available to them. Skeptics pointed out that not only would the illegal aliens likely remain, but they could enroll in other programs that protect them from deportation like Temporary Protected Status. Since the four countries are TPS-approved, when their parole period expires, if it ever does, getting added to TPS would be just a matter of bureaucratic paperwork. CBP-One is the gift to illegal aliens that keeps on giving. As of October 2023, 1.6 million migrants were awaiting approval to fly into the U.S. via the fraud-ridden parole program. Last month, DHS briefly suspended parole when an internal investigation found that thousands of illegal aliens’ sponsors listed fake social security numbers or phone numbers and used the same physical address on thousands of parole applications. 

Whatever may happen administratively, one thing is certain. ICE, hamstrung under the Biden/Harris administration, will deport few if any illegal aliens. Biden and Harris’ priority is the exact opposite: don’t deport; import.

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

Harris Would Proudly Continue Unvetted Immigration

Pennsylvania is The Swingiest Swing State

By Joe Guzzardi

Through September 13, Vice President Kamala Harris has visited Pennsylvania twelve times. Most of her campaign stops have been in red counties that supported former President Donald Trump in 2020. Along the way, Harris made an assortment of campaign promises and highlighted her resume to generate support for her presidential bid. Harris’ mission is to acquaint voters with her qualifications and her views for the future. A September New York Times/Siena poll found nearly one-third of voters don’t know who Harris is.

Both Harris and Trump have focused on Pennsylvania, the “swingiest” swing state in a must-win tight presidential election. Between the two, they’ve visited the Commonwealth two dozen times, exclusive of the stand-alone visits from Harris’ VP running mate, MinnesotaGov. Tim Walz and Trump’s VP pick, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. When, in early September, Harris landed at John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria Airport, Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman, his wife Gisele, and Johnstown Democrat Mayor Frank Janakovic joined her. Johnstown, a small city within Cambria County, has a population of 18,000. In 2020, Cambria County voted for Trump over Biden 68% to 31%. On another stop in Wilkes-Barre, part of Luzerne County, Harris, for the first time, pledged to lower the standards for federal government employment. The 2020 election results showed that in Wilkes-Barre Trump defeated Biden by a 57% to 42% margin. Those are powerful margins that Harris would have to overcome to cut into Trump’s popularity.

Harris doubled down on her economic opportunity and pro-small business agenda. If elected, Harris promised to eliminate the “unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs and increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree, understanding that requiring a certain degree does not necessarily talk about one’s skills.” Instead, Harris called for alternative pathways to good-paying jobs like apprenticeships and vocational training or adult education. Voters who have been casting ballots since the Clinton administration recognize Harris’ promises as empty. President Bill Clinton created GEAR UP, a 1998 program designed to help high-school students better prepare for the professional world. The Department of Education squandered millions on the failed program. In a corporate world that relies heavily on technology, specifically the STEM occupations—science, technology, engineering, and math— a vocational school diploma will rarely replace a college degree.

Then, touting her credentials as the former California Attorney General, Harris pointed to “transnational” cartels, and said, “I know these cartels firsthand, and as president, I will make sure we prosecute them to the full extent of the law for pushing poison like fentanyl on our children.”

In 2022, around 73,838 people in the United States died from a drug overdose that involved fentanyl, the highest number of fentanyl overdose deaths ever recorded, and a significant increase from the 36,319 reported in 2019, just weeks from President Joe Biden’s and Harris’ inauguration. Their open border agenda began immediately. Fentanyl overdoses are the driving force behind the opioid epidemic, accounting for the majority of U.S. overdose fatalities.

Curbing fentanyl deaths is an action Harris, the so called “Border Czar,” could do today if she enforced immigration laws which would prevent cartels and other illegal aliens from entering the nation without inspection. Of all of Harris’ hollow promises, none is less convincing than her vow to prosecute drug cartels. As she moves along in her campaign from swing state to swing state, drug traffickers are crossing the Southwest border daily and pushing their deadly drugs into American communities like Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre. In Pennsylvania, overdose deaths rose by 16.4% in 2020 and continued rising to 5,438 reported overdose deaths in 2021, a 6% year-over-year increase. Expressed in starker terms, an average of 15 Pennsylvanians died each and every day of a drug overdose in the last year. Harris has failed at her most important duty—to keep America safe.

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

Pennsylvania is The Swingiest Swing State

Angels’ Pitcher Donnie Moore’s Tragic Story

By Joe Guzzardi

September is Suicide Prevention Month. Suicide, one of the leading causes of death, is a national crisis that effects, both directly and indirectly, Americans of all ages. Suicide rates increased approximately 36% between 2000–2022 and was responsible for 49,476 deaths in 2022, about one death every 11 minutes.

Although suicide is most often measured in emotional terms—the crushing effect on family and friends—the financial cost is significant. In 2020, suicide and nonfatal self-harm cost the nation over $500 billion in medical and work- loss costs. Suicide adversely affects all professions, even those that are associated with glamour and high incomes. For example, the list of baseball players who have taken their own lives is eighty-five names long. Listed chronologically, California Angels pitcher Donnie Moore is number 76. On June 18, 1989, Moore died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Adding to the tragedy, before he killed himself, Moore shot and wounded his wife Tonya with three bullets from his .45 caliber firearm while the couple’s three children were at home. Tonya sustained injuries to her lungs, stomach, and neck.

The Chicago Cubs selected Moore in the first round of the 1973 Major League Baseball Draft. In his 13-year career, Moore pitched for the Cubs, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Atlanta Braves, and the Angels. In the thirty-five years since Moore’s suicide, the widely accepted theory is that one post-season pitch thrown to the Boston Red Sox Dave Henderson drove Moore to the depths of despair. Moore threw his fateful pitch when he entered the game with the Angels holding a 5-4 lead, two outs in the ninth inning and a 3-1 advantage in the best of seven series. The Angels were one strike away from advancing to the World Series for the first time in franchise history.

When Moore took the mound, catcher Rich Gedman, who had been hit by a pitch, was on first base.  Henderson hit a 2–2 pitch off Moore for a home run to give the Red Sox a 6–5 lead. The Angels were able to score a run in the bottom of the ninth, pushing the game into extra innings which gave the Halos beloved owner Gene Autry hope. Moore returned to the mound and stifled a tenth inning Red Sox rally by getting Jim Rice to ground into a double play. Nonetheless, the Red Sox scored off Moore in the 11th inning with sacrifice fly by his nemesis Henderson. The Red Sox held the Angels scoreless in the bottom of the 11th and lost the game 7–6. The defeat left the Angels with a 3–2 series advantage with two more games to play at Fenway Park. The Angels, however, lost both, by scores of 10–4 and 8–1. After the fifth game, Moore admitted that he made a bad pitch to Henderson. “I was throwing fastballs, and Henderson was fouling them off, so I went with the splitfinger, thought maybe I’d catch him off guard, but it was right in his swing.” Lost in the retelling of the story, Moore was injured during the Red Sox series, received cortisone shots in his shoulder, but never got healthy. After saving nine more games in forty-one appearances over 1987 and 1988, the Angels released Moore. The Kansas City Royals signed him for the 1989 season, but he played only in the minor leagues before being cut in June of that year, ending his 14-year career in baseball.

No one truly understands why Moore, age 35, killed himself. The often-cited reason for Moore’s suicide is that he could not shake his failure against Henderson which prevented the Angels from advancing to the World Series. But pitchers routinely give up gopher balls, many at key times in crucial games. Bad performances in baseball are part of the game. Moore had been arguing with Tonya, and the pair had discussed divorce. But Moore had better options including counseling or separation. Money was not a concern; in 1986, Moore signed a $3 million contract, $8.6 million today. Moore’s 13 years in baseball were more than the average MLB pitcher lasts, and for about five years, he was one of the game’s premier relievers. He pitched two shutout innings in the 1985 All-Star Game. Despite his accomplishments, Moore was deeply depressed.

Moore’s heartbreaking story has a comforting footnote. Because of her injuries, Tonya missed Donnie’s memorial service in Santa Ana and his funeral in Lubbock, Texas. To help Tonya get over her grief and at her request, family attorney Randall Johnson arranged to have Moore’s body brought to her at the hospital. Orderlies delivered his coffin to an empty room, and then wheeled Tonya in. Tonya said the viewing gave her a chance to express her feelings. “I told him I forgive him,” she told the Los Angeles Times from her hospital bed. “I told him I love him. He had a lot of problems, but I still love him. He was a sweet guy.”

Angels’ Pitcher Donnie Moore’s Tragic Story

Marvin Miller Made Baseball Players Millionaires

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marvin Miller Made Baseball Players Millionaires

CBO Explains Bad BLS Reports: Over-Immigration

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

CBO Explains Bad BLS Reports

Viewers Learned Nothing From Debate

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Viewers Learned Nothing From Debate

BLS Admits Jobs Overstated, Gives Phony Boost to Bidenomics

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

BLS Admits Jobs Overstated

Feds Piling On US Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feds Piling On US Workers Feds Piling On US Workers

Harris-Walz Weakest Border Security Ticket In History ?

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harris-Walz Weakest Border Security Ticket In History ?