Category: Joe Guzzardi

VP Sweepstakes Coming into Final Stretch

By Joe Guzzardi

Former President Donald J. Trump is tied up a Manhattan court room but he’s active online. One of his fund-raising efforts asks his supporters to help him choose his Vice President. In a mass email, Trump asked “Which person would you select as your next Vice President? Type in the person’s name here.” Trump will make up his own mind, but the potential candidates list is long, and his choice is important. A significant faction of registered GOP voters dubious about Trump’s candidacy could be swayed toward the former president based on his VP selection. Even though Nikki Haley abandoned her presidential campaign in early March after losing all but one state in Super Tuesday’s primary races, she’s still managed to clinch 13%-18% of the GOP electorate in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Haley’s performance causes GOP insiders to question whether her supporters will ultimately back Trump, cross party lines or simply stay home.

Trump’s VP will, if history holds, debate Kamala Harris on September 25 at Lafayette College, a key event that follows the first scheduled presidential debate, September 16 at Texas State University. A look back: The first vice presidential debate occurred in 1976 between two seasoned Senators, Kansas’ Bob Dole and Minnesota’s Walter Mondale. The exchanges were lively; Mondale called Ford “a hatchet-man.” Both were veteran politicians, tough and loyal, Dole to the right politically of incumbent President Gerald Ford and Mondale to the left of the challenger, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

Among the names being bandied about are three U.S. Senators: Ohio’s J.D. Vance, Florida’s Marco Rubio and South Carolina’s Tim Scott, as well as U.S. Reps. Byron Scott (R-Fla.) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Forget them. If Trump wins, he’ll need every congressional supporting vote he can get; to remove five certain yeas from Congress on his agenda would be folly. Another name mentioned is also a highly unlikely choice. Although Trump flew North Dakota Governor and one-time 2024 presidential hopeful Doug Burgum to his Wildwood, New Jersey rally, the moderate is, like the presumptive nominee, an old, white billionaire. North Dakota has three electoral votes, and in 2016 and 2020 Trump won the state by a 2:1 ratio. Trump would gain nothing from an electoral college angle if he added Burgum to the ticket.

That narrows the prospects down to Tulsi Gabbard who, in many ways, is an ideal VP choice. Gabbard is young, attractive, well-spoken, a former four-term House Democrat, an Iraq War veteran who has served in the Army since 2003 and was promoted to Major in 2015. In 2022, Gabbard abandoned the Democratic Party because of its shift to the far-left, or as she put it, is “now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, undermines Americans’ God-given freedoms, demonizes the police but protects criminals, encourages open borders, weaponizes national security for politics’ sake, and pushes the country ever closer to nuclear war.” In further explaining her decision to switch to the Independent Party, Gabbard added that she believes in a government that is of, by, and for the people. Unfortunately, she continued, today’s Democratic Party does not.” The 2020 presidential hopeful gave the keynote speech in March at Mar-a-Lago to the 1917 Society, a volunteer group dedicated to preserving the Constitution.

However, on voters’ top concern, immigration, Gabbard’s grade while she was in the House was as bad as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, F-. Gabbard was on the wrong side of every important immigration issue; she voted against stronger border and interior enforcement, and in favor of expanding worker visas that displace employed Americans. Her congressional votes showed that, at the time she cast them, she encouraged amnesty enticements and rewarded illegal aliens. Another irrevocable negative: Gabbard endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and, after she ended her own presidential campaign, Biden in 2020.

Should Gabbard’s dismal congressional immigration voting record and her past presidential endorsements surface in her debate against Harris, the Hawaiian could point to her recent criticism of Biden’s open borders, her support of Israel and, in general, her more traditional values and say she’s evolved politically and socially since becoming an Independent. Trump promises to name his VP before the GOP national convention in Milwaukee, July 15-18. In the end, he may not choose Gabbard, but he absolutely cannot remove any of his congressional allies.

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

VP Sweepstakes Coming into Final Stretch

Remembering Pat Tillman

By Joe Guzzardi

Arizona State University and Arizona Cardinals’ safety Pat Tillman shocked the sports world when, in 2002, he walked away from a $3.6 million professional football contract to join the U.S. Army Rangers. Tillman, who attended ASU on an athletic scholarship, had been a first-team All-American and Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year in 1997. By 2000, two years after he joined the Cardinals, Sports Illustrated named Tillman to its NFL All-Pro team. But eight months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Tillman and his brother Kevin enlisted in the Army and completed basic training together.  Pat then fulfilled the Ranger Assessment & Selection Program requirements and was assigned to the 2^nd Ranger Battalion in Ft. Lewis, Washington. Tillman was deployed and participated in the initial invasion of Iraq, what became known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. One year later, Tillman entered Ranger School and, upon finishing his training in November 2003, was shipped to Afghanistan.

On April 22, 2004, Tillman and Afghan allied soldier Sayed Farhad were killed by Afghan enemy combatants in a firefight near the Pakistan border —or so the official and ultimately proven false story went. The Army issued a purposely deceptive statement about the circumstances surrounding Tillman’s death. As Tillman was leading his team to help comrades caught in an ambush, the Army claimed he was fatally shot while fighting “without regard for his personal safety.”

Weeks after Tillman’s burial, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigative Division (CID) investigated the incident and concluded that Tillman and Farhad were killed by “friendly fire.” The lengthy coverup included the Army’s order to Tillman’s fellow Army soldiers to lie to his peers about the circumstances that led to the two deaths. Tillman’s mother Mary and his father Patrick were heartbroken when they heard the truth, something they suspected since the Army had been tight-lipped when they pressed for the details that surrounded their son’s final moments. Tillman’s family and other critics insisted that the President George W. Bush and his Department of Defense didn’t want negative press with a re-election campaign soon to get underway. In her congressional testimony, Tillman’s mother said: “The deception surrounding this case was an insult to the family, but more importantly, its primary purpose was to deceive a whole nation.” Ironically, just days before he was killed, Tillman told the Washington Post that the U.S.’s invasion and occupation of Iraq was illegal and immoral.

In a 2021 op-ed, Tillman’s brother Kevin railed against the government’s craven disinformation campaign waged against Pat’s memory and condemned America’s forever wars. Kevin opined that the Iraq invasion began with a barrage of administration lies about Saddam’s supposed supply of weapons of mass destruction, his reputed links to al-Qaeda, and the idea that American soldiers were liberating the Iraqi people. Some of the troops were assigned to run around Baghdad, “east, west, south, and north somewhat,” looking for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. In his column, Kevin wrote that the invasion was “catastrophic,” and resulted in Iraqi society’s destruction, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of American soldiers, even Iraq’s leadership was removed and its military disbanded—mission accomplished, in President George W. Bush’s eyes. Neither Bush nor the rest of his top officials were held responsible for what happened.

Tillman was 27 when he was killed in a futile, senseless war. In his wartime journals, he repeatedly wrote of the strength he drew from his family, friendships, and from his high school sweetheart and eventual wife Marie Ugenti. Shortly before his deployment to Iraq, Tillman wrote a “just in case” letter to his wife for her to open in the event of his death. The letter sat on their bedroom dresser for months before the fateful day arrived. Tillman’s final request: “I ask that you live.” Ugenti wrote a book titled “The Letter: My Journey through Love, Loss and Life.” Ugenti has remarried and, with her new husband, has five children. She also chairs the Pat Tillman Foundation, a non-profit that provides academic scholarships to military service members and their spouses.

Posthumously promoted from specialist to corporal, Tillman was also awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. The accolades are cold comfort to Tillman’s family and friends. A non-profit

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

Remembering Pat Tillman

Revoke Hate-Speakers F-1 Visas, Says Senator

By Joe Guzzardi

The coast-to-coast college rioting and destruction that marked late April and early May should draw attention to international students and precipitate a demand from fed up citizen taxpayers that the federal government tighten up the F-1/J-1 student visa guidelines. Participating in the criminal behavior at Columbia, Penn, UCLA, USC, North Carolina, and NYU, among dozens of other prominent universities, were students holding temporary non-immigrant visas.  More than one million foreign-born students including 45,000 from the Middle East arrived on U.S. campuses in academic year 2022/2023. The premise is that the visa programs give foreign-born university students an opportunity to study in the U.S. so that they will be better able to contribute to their countries advancement when they return home. But, in practice, many foreign students remain in the U.S. and hire on with an American company, thus displacing citizen job seekers. Overstaying non-immigrant visas is an easily done crime especially since no one in federal immigration enforcement seeks them out.

From highly selective UCLA—only 8.8 percent of its 145,904 applicants are admitted—more than 3,000 students from 85 nations arrive on mostly F-1 student visas, but also on J-1 exchange visas. Although UC Berkeley has long been considered the gem of the UC system, its overall admission acceptance rate is 11.6%, 125,910 applications and 14,566 accepted. Cal’s international F-1/J-1 enrollment is 7,343.

UCLA’s anti-Semitic gang activity was uglier than Cal’s, but the Golden Bears had a critical free speech showdown. Pro-Palestinian students and their outside agitator comrades set up about 15 tents on the steps of Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza on Monday afternoon, vowing to stay put until the university system officially called for an end to the Israel-Hamas war, cut its study-abroad program with Israel and divests from companies with ties to Israel. Berkeley Law School student Malak Afaneh, co-president of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, finally gave the speech Jewish law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky prevented her from giving at an invitation-only lunch he and his civil rights law professor wife, Catherine Fisk, hosted at their home. In front of Fisk and Chemerinsky’s house, Afaneh yelled: “I will keep shouting this speech from the rooftops until Palestine is free.”

In a statement published on the Berkeley Law website, Chemerinsky said that he and his wife had been inviting students to their home for dinner since he became a dean. “I never imagined that something that we do to help our community would become ugly and divisive,” he said. Chemerinsky continued: “I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.

“We’re willing to risk suspension,” said Afaneh, a third-year law student and a Palestinian-American, who believes a Palestinian state should replace the country of Israel. “We’re willing to risk expulsion; we’re willing to risk arrest. We’re willing to risk anything to stand here until we achieve our demands for divestment.”  Chemerinsky responded, correctly, to Afaneh’s invocation of the Constitution when he countered: “This is my house! The First Amendment doesn’t apply!” One lawyer’s interpretation held by most constitutional scholars: —“public university students don’t have a First Amendment right to take over a backyard dinner party — even one their school is hosting.” And from George Washington University professor of public interest law Johathan Turley’s blog: “Regrettably, the scene that unfolded at the home of Dean Chemerinsky will be viewed by many as a triumph rather than an embarrassment for their cause. Disruption has become the touchstone of protests in higher education.” At the same time in what should be a ten-alarm fire warning for Americans watching U.S. sovereignty erode, schools like UCLA have paid activists-in-residence or now bestow degrees in activism.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Harvard Law School, J.D. 2002, after observing the campus chaos and violence, said “And by the way, any of these students who are foreigners here on visas should immediately have their visas revoked by the Biden Administration, be promptly deported. They have no right to be here. They certainly have no right to be here spewing anti-Semitic and anti-Israel filth.” Deporting lawbreakers is, however, inconsistent with Biden’s immigration agenda which is to reward, not punish, criminals.

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

Revoke Hate-Speakers F-1 Visas

Congress Shuns Passenger Safety in FAA Reauthorization

By Joe Guzzardi

The summer vacation travel schedule is just weeks away. Those who journey by air worry about the terrifying sequence of near-disasters that occurred during the past year, and are keeping their fingers crossed that their flights will take off and land without incident. Boeing has been at the forefront of quality concerns; after a six-week audit, the Federal Aviation Administration said that the agency found “multiple instances” of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, which supplies the aircraft manufacturer with fuselages, of failing to “comply with manufacturing quality control requirements.” As potential passengers look for ways to know what plane they’ll likely be on, airlines and booking sites offer alternatives for customers including omitting the troubled Boeing Max 9 from flight search results.The summer vacation travel schedule is just weeks away. Those who journey by air worry about the tThe summer vacation travel schedule is just weeks away. Those who journey by air worry about the terrifying sequence of near-disasters that occurred during the past year, and are keeping their fingers crossed that their flights will take off and land without incident. Boeing has been at the forefront of quality concerns; after a six-week audit, the Federal Aviation Administration said that the agency found “multiple instances” of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, which supplies the aircraft manufacturer with fuselages, of failing to “comply with manufacturing quality control requirements.” As potential passengers look for ways to know what plane they’ll likely be on, airlines and booking sites offer alternatives for customers including omitting the troubled Boeing Max 9 from flight search results.

While passengers worry that doors may blow out mid-air or tires might fall off during take-off, another grave but mostly unknown danger lurks. Unvetted illegal aliens are allowed on commercial flights, thanks to the Biden administration’s ongoing commitment to welcoming to America millions from around the world whose backgrounds and intentions are unknown. Currently, no U.S. citizens, lawful permanent resident immigrants, or legally present nonimmigrants may board an aircraft traveling to or within the United States without presenting a valid, government-issued photo ID or presenting one of numerous TSA-acceptable documents that will be closely scrutinized. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and unvetted parolees can board aircraft for travel to or within the U. S. based solely on the biographic information they provided on the CBP-One app or verbally gave to the Border Patrol agents that processed them before releasing them into the interior. The name they provided could be fictional. Worse, the illegal aliens could have a criminal record and/or criminal intent.

This sequence of events regarding illegal aliens’ movements is, from beginning to end, illegal and unconstitutional. Border patrol agents should arrest, not release illegal aliens. The CBP-One app is an illegal scheme that the Biden administration cooked up to ease entry for inadmissible aliens at an official port of entry, and thereby make the masses accumulated at border less dramatic, and less politically damaging. The bogus app, not congressionally approved, eventually leads to parole and work permission. Biden has unconstitutionally abused the parole privilege, legally intended to be granted on a case-by-case basis, and not handed out en masse to thousands of illegal aliens. Through March 2024, 326,000 illegal aliens have arrived via air; the most adversely affected cities are Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and New York with respectively, 91,821, 60,461, and 14,827.

An opportunity to right Biden’s criminal wrongs regarding aliens’ air travel arrangements depends on Congress which has begun its deliberations on the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Congress can close the policy loophole that threatens public safety, allowing unvetted individuals with unverifiable identification to board aircraft traveling to or within the U.S. This is a clear and unacceptable public safety and national security risk. The FAA’s stated mission is “to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world.” On September 11, 2001, the U. S. learned the hard way that the nation must put primary emphasis on “safest” when it comes to air travel. As a direct result of 9/11, Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005, which requires states to fortify the security features of driver’s licenses and verify the citizenship or lawful immigration status of recipients of such licenses. Real ID was originally set to be enforced in 2008 but, because of congressional disinterest in enforcement, it has been delayed multiple times. The revised Real ID deadline for compliance with the identification requirements is 2025.

By allowing illegal aliens and parolees to board aircraft based only on the information they entered on the CBP-One app or that an overworked, dispirited Border Patrol agent filled in on Notice to Appear (NTA) or Notice to Report (NTR) forms, air carriers and the Department of Homeland Security are putting citizens or legally present immigrant passengers at risk. Such disinterest is especially troubling when FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned of an elevated threat from foreign terrorist organizations and admitted that record numbers of known terrorists have crossed the southern border. In FY 2023, agents apprehended 736 known or suspected terrorists at the Southwest border, the largest total in U.S. history.

The May 1oth deadline FAA reauthorization is at hand and legislators must move quickly to reach an accord on the 1,o68-page aviation bill. But seven last-minute proposed amendments threaten to derail what several senators are referring to as “must-pass” legislation. Some of the amendments included changes to credit card swipe fees, pilots ages, flights into and out of Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport. Congress should have included in the legislation to reauthorize the FAA Utah Senator Mike Lee’s S. 4051, the Verifying that all Aliens have Legitimate Identification Documents Act (the VALID Act). The VALID Act closes the dangerous loophole by prohibiting air carriers and DHS from accepting the CBP-One app, NTAs, or NTRs to board aircraft traveling to or within the United States. The simple result of passing legislation that includes VALID Act provisions is that every passenger on every flight operating in the U.S. will have presented verifiable photo identification prior to boarding. Without the VALID Act included in the reauthorization legislation, the FAA will not be able “to provide the safest…aerospace system in the world.” Introduced on March 22nd but, as of May 7th, the VALID Act has only ten co-sponsors, all Republicans. Travelers should be outraged that their security has been compromised so that illegal aliens can move about the country they don’t belong in with utmost ease, a disappointing revelation about how little either side of the aisle cares about citizens’ safety.

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

Congress Shuns Passenger Safety in FAA Reauthorization

Merrick Garland MIA During Campus Upheavals

By Joe Guzzardi

Last week, amid nationwide student protesting that threatened Jewish students and effectively shut down college campuses, 27 GOP U.S. Senators sent Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona a letter urging them to restore order and shut down the antisemitic, pro-Palestine mobs. The letter requested an April 24 update that detailed the steps that the AG’s office would take to restore campus order and allay the Jewish students’ fear for their safety.

From the Senators’ letter: “You need to take action to restore order and protect Jewish students on our college campuses. President Biden issued a statement on Sunday, purporting to condemn the outbreak of anti-Semitism. If that statement was serious, it must be accompanied by immediate action from your departments.” They continued: “Rioting violates federal law. Violence or attempted violence against anyone because of their Jewish heritage violates federal law. School administrators’ failure to protect Jewish students from discrimination or harassment violates federal law and is grounds for those schools losing access to federal funds. Espousing support for terrorists such as Hamas violates federal immigration law and is grounds for deportation.”

A week after the April 24 deadline, the senators have not received a formal reply, and the criminal protests have accelerated. Cardona is Puerto Rican and may not have as strong a commitment to resolving the campus crimes as the Jewish Garland whose indifference is inexplicable. At a House Judiciary Committee hearing last year, Garland emotionally testified that the Department of Justice’s function is to provide equal protection to all. He then tearfully shared the story that two of his grandmother’s siblings were Holocaust murder victims. The protection of the law provided equally to all, Garland continued passionately, is what makes America great, and what saved his immigrant grandmother’s life when the U.S. took her in. “Under the protection of our laws, she was able to live without fear of persecution,” Garland concluded. Garland’s refusal to actively support is a sign that Biden has intimidated him. But principled AGs stand up for what they believe in.

Last November, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, (R-Florida), urged Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, the stepson of a Holocaust survivor, to revoke the visas of agitators who support Hamas. In his statement, Rubio reminded Democrats that a visa is not a constitutional right but rather temporary permission for foreign nationals to visit the U.S. After Rubio filed a motion to deport terrorist sympathizers, Senate Democrats blocked it. President Biden also rejected Rubio’s suggestion and instead extended protections to “some Palestinians” from deportations.

Biden’s remarks regarding Palestinians’ protections are telling, and consistent with his open borders policy. The president said he has determined that with some exceptions “it is in the foreign policy interest of the United States to defer for 18 months the removal of any Palestinian subject.” First, Biden did not explain the thought process that led to his conclusion that “the foreign policy interest of the United States” is advanced by the non-removal of Palestinian subjects. Second, U.S. presidents do not have the constitutional authority to determine which foreign nationals remain and which must be removed. Third, Biden pressed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to reward with work permission Palestinian “non-citizens whose removal has been deferred.” Biden then pressed the secretary “to consider suspending regulatory requirements with respect to F-1 non-immigrant students who are Palestinians,” presumably a recommendation that students be granted employment authorization, an affirmative benefit that their visa forbids. Mayorkas does not have the sole authority to defer deportation or to grant work permission to non-immigrant visa holders or visa overstayers. Congress, not the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority over immigration. Finally, more foreign-born authorized workers depress native Americans’ job opportunities; since 2019, all the net job growth has gone to immigrants.

Biden’s sweeping statement for Palestinian protections could include rabblerousing students who may be present on F-1 visas. The non-immigrant student visa is a program that allows international students to study at American universities, with the understanding that after graduation, they will return home to use their U.S. degree to improve their native countries’ quality of life. Many, however, overstay their visas, and because of the relative ease with which foreign graduates of U.S. colleges may remain in the U.S. and seek employment, recent American graduates frequently compete with their foreign peers for jobs. Because employers view corporate diversity as positive, they give preference to international candidates over equally qualified Americans. In FY 2022, an estimated 850,000 visa holders, including 55,023 student and exchange visitors who overstayed.

The F-1 visa is an unwieldy program that has no annual limit on incoming students. For the 2022/2023 academic year, 1,057, 188 international students were enrolled in U.S. universities including 19,001 at Columbia, the epicenter of the ongoing student chaos. To help assure a safe and orderly academic environment, the State Department must review the F-1 visa, impose an annual numerical total that does not exceed 500,000, and work with DHS to institute a vigorous post-graduate enforcement policy to ensure that students return home when their visas expire.

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

Merrick Garland MIA During Campus Upheavals

Both Sides Agree That Border Bill Would Keep Invasion Going

By Joe Guzzardi

An Associated Press story that three of its leading reporters contributed to is a grand example of journalists not seeing the forest for the trees. Colleen Long, Zeke Miller, and Seung Min Kim, whose titles respectively are White House law enforcement and legal affairs correspondent, chief White House correspondent, and White House reporter, teamed up to write “Biden Determined to Use Stunning Trump-backed Collapse of Border Deal as a Weapon in 2024 Campaign.”

The story’s gist about the collapsed Senate border deal does not address the most crucial point: would the bill fulfill its stated purpose of securing the border? While President Joe Biden moved forward on his never-ending quest to seek additional funding for Ukraine, he gambled that as part of the same package he could satisfy Americans’ demand that he secures the U.S.-Mexico border. In his press release, Biden wrote that the bill “includes the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades. I strongly support it. It will make our country safer, make our border more secure….”

Naturally, Biden’s take away would be positive. The deal was negotiated by two Democrats, Arizona’s faux Independent Kyrsten Sinema who caucuses with Democrats, deep blue Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, and one Republican sacrificial lamb, Oklahoma’s James Lankford, whose home state is safely six hundred miles away from Eagle Pass, the landing point for thousands of arriving illegal aliens. A more appropriate choice to join the negotiating team would have been Texas’ Ted Cruz or Florida’s Marco Rubio whose constituents are under siege. The bill had input from impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), two Biden confidants. In his 35 years in Congress, Schumer has unfailingly voted against border and interior enforcement as well as in favor of more liberal asylum standards and increased annual refugee ceilings.

Critics, including former President Donald Trump, insisted that the bill was hurtful for the homeland, and did nothing to secure the border, but instead assured that illegal crossings would persist, and that many illegal aliens would continue to get affirmative benefits. At a rally in Nevada, after solidifying his position as the far and away GOP front-runner, Trump made his feelings known. “As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open border betrayal of America. I’ll fight it all the way.” Then he added, “A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s OK. Please blame it on me. Please.” Trump’s statement provided Biden with the fodder he intends to use during the intense summer campaigning months. Again, Trump’s position, like Biden’s, is predictable. He knows that immigration is voters’ top concern, and his statement plays to his base.

The bill cannot be both “the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades,” and “an open borders betrayal of America.” AP should have focused on Biden and Trump’s disparate views on the immigration bill, S. Amdt.1388 to H.R. 815, and delved into whether the bill is bad, as the former president claimed, or whether the incumbent is on solid footing when he insisted that the bill provided the solution to the border crisis. Digging into the bill’s weeds would be challenging for AP since the senators’ proposed four hundred-pages long legislation was written with typical congressional obfuscation. Immigration law is tough for laymen to grasp, especially four hundred pages of it.

AP missed an opportunity to reach out to legal experts to help answer the straightforward question: is the Senate bill good or bad for the nation? Nolan Rappaport, a Democrat who opines in “The Hill” has excellent credentials. For three years, Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert and subsequently served a four-year period as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. Before working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years. Rappaport’s summary of the amendment was concise: “the Border Act would not secure the border. Among other weaknesses, it fails to provide a solution to the most serious problem, which is that Biden has released so many asylum seekers into the country that our asylum system has broken.”

Another professional legal opinion came from the Center for Immigration Studies’ Andrew Arthur whose 20 year-plus career includes a period as Counsel on the House Judiciary Committee where he performed oversight of immigration issues. After five years at the House Judiciary, he was appointed to the immigration bench, serving for eight years as an Immigration Judge. Arthur reached the same conclusion as Rappaport: “the bill fails to close the vast majority of loopholes smugglers have been exploiting for a decade to move illegal migrants (and migrant families and children, in particular) into the United States. Worse, it codifies some of them.” Among the loopholes Arthur referred to were “the low “credible fear” standard for border migrants seeking asylum.” 

In short, the amendment would legalize border chaos by allowing up to 5,000 illegal entries per day, potentially 1.85 million illegal aliens annually, before border closure is required. The border closure guidelines are time-limited, however, and the untrustworthy Biden and Mayorkas have the discretion to determine how and when to use the authority provided. Biden does not need legislative action to close the border, and the administration’s support of the bill, which the Senate rejected, is an open admission of its failures. The proposed cap of 5,000 illegal entries per day proves that Biden could close the border to illegal aliens in an instant if he had the will to do it. The border solution that Americans want is to enforce existing immigration laws; no new legislation required.

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

Both Sides Agree That Border Bill Would Keep Invasion Going

Five Pinocchios for Gavin Newsom

By Joe Guzzardi

Add California Governor Gavin Newsom’s name to the list of prominent elected officials who blatantly lied about their personal histories. Senator Elizabeth Warren lied for years about her alleged American Indian heritage. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal falsely claimed to have been a Vietnam war combatant. Instead of slinking silently away under the cover of darkness, Warren and Blumenthal shrugged their lies off and successfully campaigned for re-election. Warren first identified as an American Indian in the 1980s and listed under race on her State Bar of Texas registration form as American Indian. In her 2019 presidential bid, voters disregarded Warren’s brazen misrepresentation; 49 percent polled said they considered decades of lying about her heritage didn’t matter. In her telephone call to the Cherokee Nation’s principal leader Bill John Baker, Warren apologized, then went about her Senate career unscarred.

Blumenthal claimed to have served in Vietnam, a falsehood that the New York Times exposed. Truth be told, Blumenthal never went to Vietnam. Instead, he obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war. Blumenthal claimed that he “misspoke” about Vietnam, but he nevertheless has been elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, 2016, and 2022.

Although not as outrageous as Warren’s and Blumenthal’s lies, Newsom’s whopper is notable, and an effort to enhance his shadow presidential campaign. As Newsom tells the story, he was headed to a community college until Santa Clara University’s baseball coaches phoned with a partial scholarship offer which, he said, “changed my life, my trajectory”. But former coaches and teammates countered that Newsom’s baseball biography, repeated again and again through interviews and glossy magazine profiles and coverage of his 2021 baseball-themed children’s book on overcoming dyslexia, inflated his baseball credentials, and gave the impression that he was a more accomplished player than he was.

A junior varsity recruit who played only during the fall tryouts in his freshman and sophomore years, Newsom left the baseball program before the regular season began without ever playing an official game for the Broncos, an NCAA Division-1 school. Newsom does not appear on the Broncos’ all-time roster or in media guides published by the athletic department.

Rumors persist that the Democratic National Party is plotting to dump Biden and his miserable poll ratings. Newsom waits anxiously in the wings. But from a national voters’ perspective Newsom’s curriculum vitae makes him increasingly unelectable. Should Newsom ever reach the campaign trail, he’d be on the defensive from the get-go. California has amassed an enormous $73 billion deficit, in large part because the dysfunctional state has driven taxpayers away. The non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) in its February update added $15 billion to its original $58 billion budget current deficit projection. The massive, mounting debt coincides with the large numbers of fleeing taxpayers, one of California’s primary sources of revenue. Census data shows that California’s population dropped by about 75,400 between July 2022 and July 2023. Many of the people leaving California are taking significant resources with them. California experienced a net loss of more than 27,000 tax filers with an adjusted gross income of over $200,000 between 2020 and 2021, according to the Tax Foundation. The state’s budget deficit is more stunning when compared to 2022’s $97.5 billion surplus which quickly morphed into a $31 billion-plus deficit.

Newsom will push more Californians out of the-once Golden State if the legislature approves his energy bill plan. California lawmakers propose to change the way electricity is billed to households, part of Newsom’s tax the rich scheme. Instead of paying for the electricity consumption a household uses, the home will also be billed based on its income. A draft of the new law requires that people earning $28,000-$69,000 be charged an extra $20 to $34 per month. Those earning $69,000-$180,000 would pay $51 to $73 per month, and people earning more than $180,000 would pay a $85-to-$128 monthly surcharge. California has one of the nation’s highest costs of living and ranks third in highest residential energy costs. Residents making $28,000 annually are struggling financially, especially if they’re supporting large families, and cannot afford an energy surtax. They too may soon be heading for the highway. The California Public Utilities Commission has until July 1 to implement the new rule into the billing process.

A stumping Newsom would meet strong headwinds on his immigration agenda, national voters’ biggest concerns. Newsom’s welcoming immigration laws will make it impossible for him to pose as an enforcement advocate. His latest affront: effective January 1, 2024, all illegal aliens, regardless of age, will qualify for Medi-Cal, California’s version of the federal Medicaid program for low-income individuals. Newsom estimates conservatively that 764,000 illegal aliens will enroll, exacerbating the already strained Medi-Cal system that provides for 14.6 million Californians, about a third of the state’s population. An LAO estimate calculated that providing Medi-Cal to California’s illegal alien population would cost the state over $6.5 billion annually, a tough pill for taxpayers to swallow when the budget is $73 billion in the red. For the DNC, pushing Biden aside to make room for the potentially less electable Newsom would be a roll of the dice. The party is better off with the devil it knows, Biden, than to gamble on the duplicitous Newsom.

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

Five Pinocchios for Gavin Newsom Five Pinocchios for Gavin Newsom

‘Charlie Hustle’ Delves into Pete Rose, the Player and the Man

By Joe Guzzardi

Pete Rose, aka “Charlie Hustle,” owns baseball’s all-time hits record, 4,256. Rose holds 14 other Major League records, and five other National League records. Some are less widely known than his hits record but are still nearly impossible to comprehend in this era when players routinely sit out games because of “tenderness” or “discomfort.”: Baseball’s only major league player to play 500 games at five positions, 1B (969), 2B (634), 3B (634), LF (671), RF (595), Rose won Gold Gloves at all the positions except 3B. No active player is anywhere close to breaking Rose’s hits record or exceeding most of his on-the-field achievements. Cincinnati native and journalist Keith O’Brien’s biography “Charlie Hustle: the Rise and Fall of Pete Rose and the Last Glory Days of Baseball” tells the good, the bad and the ugly about Rose, whose gambling addiction ended in a lifetime Hall of Fame ban. Over the years since Rose retired as a player and a manager, his name has become synonymous with gambling, and his contributions to the Big Red Machine’s world championships with teammates Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, and manager Sparky Anderson have faded in comparison to his flaws.

After reading O’Brien’s well-researched, meticulously written biography, the reader will likely conclude that Rose might not be his first choice for a dinner companion. Fans can, however, through Rose’s website, pay to dine with Charlie Hustle at an upscale Las Vegas restaurant. In his past, Rose, now 83, hung out with unsavory types, frequented Cincinnati’s Gold’s Gym where hoods congregated, and participated in multiple extramarital affairs. One of Rose’s many mistresses said that he loved only two things, baseball and himself. Despite or perhaps because of his flaws, the scrappy, undersized, blue-collar, Cincinnati-born Rose was a fan favorite.

The question fans pose is whether Rose is being treated fairly considering MLBs active promotion of baseball gambling through its partnership with the bookmaking website FanDuel which, it states, “provides customers the ability to watch and wager on MLB games via [the] Sportsbook app.”  MLB is also inexplicably tolerant of players who took Performance Enhancing Drugs, a federal felony. Without a valid medical prescription, the possession of, distribution of or use of PEDs violates the Controlled Substances Act, and is punishable by prison and/or significant fines. Rose’s crime was, at worst, a misdemeanor. Yet multiple MLB commissioners have denied Rose HOF ballot eligibility status, and rejected his appeals, hypocrisy at its apex since its FanDuel partnership encourages gambling. In 2018, the Supreme Court opened the door for states to legalize sports betting; since then, 38 states have legalized sports betting and five others are in active legislation to legally sanction betting. By 2023, U.S. gamblers wagered more than $500 billion. Gambling addictions can lead to severe emotional problems, lost jobs, and destroy marriages.  Bettor’s Eye, presented by BetMGM, is MLBs first daily betting-focused program which, it deceptively claims, provides a fun look at the latest baseball betting trends and information. One thing can be predicted with certainty: put cash down on those “fun looks,” and kiss your money goodbye.

MLB has consistently denied Rose a place on the HOF ballot, but PED abusers Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire have appeared on ballots or until their eligibility periods expired. Bonds, Clemens and others could eventually reach the Hall via the newly created and absurd “Today’s Committee” which will consider players that fell short on the traditional ballot. Only Rose, a better all-around player than any of them, remains on the outside looking in. The Baseball Writers Association of America elected Mike Piazza, an admitted PED user, and, on the first ballot, David Ortiz, another user. Bonds, who holds the career home run record, Clemens’ seven Cy Young awards and others career and season achievements are still in the record books, despite having been reached illegally. Baseball’s PED users are unindicted felons, unworthy of a Cooperstown plaque. MLB is investigating the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani for his possible involvement in a gambling scandal. Whatever the investigators may find, rest assured that a whitewash will exonerate baseball’s $700 million poster boy. Any other conclusion would be a black eye for Commissioner Rob Manfred, the Dodgers, and the baseball industry.

“Charlie Hustle,” a derogative nickname given to Rose by Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, is a compelling must-read for fans who remember seeing the 1970s star as well as those who never watched baseball’s all-time great. Rose may not be a likeable guy, but his accomplishments as a player should give him an opportunity for Cooperstown induction.

Buy “Charlie Hustle” here.

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

‘Charlie Hustle’ Delves into Pete Rose, the Player and the Man

Wall Street Giddy Over Mass Migration, Deceptively Tout GDP Growth

By Joe Guzzardi

A direct relationship exists between high immigration levels and pro-expansionists’ phony research which insists that immigrants are making a significant fiscal contribution to the economy. Economists tout the “more immigration is better” argument even though their logic is sophomoric and cannot stand up to the obvious flaws in their reasoning. The three-year long border surge that has given the green light to releasing eight million or more illegal immigrants into the U.S. interior is economic good news, shills insist. Instead of worrying about unvetted illegal aliens settling into established communities nationwide, Americans should rejoice in their contribution to higher gross domestic product—or so the story goes.

Last month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that legal and illegal immigration will generate a $7 trillion boost to gross domestic product over the next decade, a conclusion that the agency arrived at after including the recent immigration surge. Wall Street is euphoric about millions of unvetted, unskilled, under-educated, non-English speaking border surgers. If only the general population could see the labor and societal advantages to an open border instead of wringing its hands about, as President Biden refers to them, the “newcomers,” then all would be hunky-dory.

If Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which revised up its near-term economic growth forecasts,  JPMorgan Chase & Co. and BNP Paribas SA were among banks that acknowledged the so-called economic benefits from surging immigration, then skeptical working-class Americans should get onboard. More “newcomers” means a higher GDP, the be-all and end-all in the opinions of globalist economists. In her letter to its forty-two million clients, Janet Henry, HSBC Holdings global chief economist, wrote that no advanced economy has benefited from immigration as much as the United States. Henry wrote: “the impact of migration has been an important part of the U. S. growth story over the past two years.” HSBC Holdings reported a 2023 $30.3 billion pre-tax profit.

Before analyzing the “impact of migration” that Henry touts, the obvious must be addressed. Per capita growth, not GDP, is the true measure of a society’s prosperity. While it is accurate that a larger population invariably results in a greater aggregate economy— more workers, more consumers, and more government spending— all expand the GDP. But a nation’s standard of living is determined by per capita, i.e., per person, GDP, not the overall size of the economy. Studies like “The Effect of Population Growth on Economic Growth” have shown that population growth negatively affects economic growth. Another study, “Is Low Fertility Really a Problem? Population, Aging and Consumption,” found that low fertility rates which the media bemoans, increase per capita economic growth and raises standards of living. The authors conclude that “low fertility is not a serious economic challenge,” and instead, they find that “The effect of low fertility on the number of workers and taxpayers has been offset by greater human capital investment, enhancing the productivity of workers.” They added that “Targeted immigration policy might be helpful, although we are somewhat skeptical on this point.” By targeted immigration, the authors mean thoughtful—an immigration policy that works on behalf of, not against Americans. Biden’s immigration agenda does the opposite; his open northern and southern borders harm all.

Immigration’s “impact” depends on who and where the illegal aliens have settled. The assumption is that the illegal immigrants benefit from coming to the U.S. But not all are better off—some are working for slave wages in meat processing plants, others are sex trafficking victims, and still others are sleeping on the streets, hustling for food, or stealing. Illegal aliens have perpetrated numerous violent crimes against innocent citizens.  Chicago, Denver, Boston, and New York residents have watched helplessly as illegal aliens have transformed their communities. Displaced citizens have no voice in the elitist federal, state, and municipal governments’ destruction of their communities.

More on Henry’s immigration “impact” that she overlooked, perhaps because it doesn’t fit the designated media narrative. Millions more people mean more stress on vital services essential to a properly functioning society—schools, hospitals, roads and housing. After three years of Biden’s open border, all those services have undergone negative, undesirable “impacts.” Immigration expansionists never mention the multiplier “impact.” The millions that have arrived will soon petition their family members left behind, grow their existing families, or start new ones. Today’s eight, ten or twelve million illegal aliens—don’t forget to include 1.5 million gotaways— will be because of family reunification and anchor baby births, within a couple of decades, 20 or 25 million. Recent history proves that immigration is the main population driver that brings with it substantial challenges. More people invariably mean more problems. From the Center for Immigration Studies: “immigration from 1982 to 2017 added 52.7 million people to the U.S population — 35.78 million immigrants and 16.93 million descendants—16.03 million U.S.-born children and 890,527 grandchildren…immigration accounted for 56.3 percent of U.S. population growth from 1982 to 2017.”

When Wall Street economists with their advanced Ivy League degrees opine about immigration, they project an air of credibility which a large segment of the public buys into. That’s too bad because, when the subject is immigration, most economists are selling a self-serving bill of goods without even a passing mention of the negative consequences.

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

Wall Street Giddy Over Mass Migration, Deceptively Tout GDP Growth