Category: Guest Authors

Lowering Political Temp Not Hard

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lowering Political Temp Not Hard

Lowering Political Temp Not Hard

Legendary Bill Veeck Was Showman And War Hero

By Joe Guzzardi

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

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

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

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

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

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

Legendary Bill Veeck Was Showman And War Hero

Biden and Mayorkis Created Largest Child Trafficking Ring in US History Says Senator

By Joe Guzzardi

Unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who cross the border represent a crisis within a crisis, a devastating, contentious illegal immigration subcategory.  Many millions of illegal aliens have crossed the border— the unofficial Customs and Border Protection estimates total more than 10 million, including gotaways. As record numbers of illegal aliens continue to arrive, border authorities are also seeing higher numbers of minors traveling without a legal guardian. In response to the surge in unaccompanied youth, the Biden administration is releasing children to sponsors on an average of every 28 days. Prospective hosts can fill out their paperwork remotely and case workers rarely visit their home to evaluate the children’s safety. Officials are required, within one month, to follow up with the child via a phone call, a clear security risk. Lax monitoring has led to 85,000 UACs unaccounted for—lost in the federal system. 

Among the 10 million border surgers are about 430,000 illegal alien minors who have crossed the Texas/Mexico border since President Biden’s inauguration. The Congressional Research Service once estimated that 75 to 80 percent of unaccompanied minor immigrants are smuggled into the U.S. Others make the dangerous journey alone. Because U.S. immigration law requires CBP agents to transfer unaccompanied children who are not from Mexico to HHS custody, usually within 72 hours, parents entrust brutal cartel operators to deliver their children to the border where they assume the federal government will care for them and place them safely with family members.

After Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA), UAC arrivals spiked. Section 235 of the TVPRA divvied up UACs into two separate groups: (1) children from contiguous Canada and Mexico and (2) minors from all other nations. Predictably, the number of UACs from non-contiguous countries soared, as parents and astute smugglers realized that section 235 virtually assured that any child who could make it illegally into the U.S. would be released into the U.S. to rejoin his family.

Look at the stats: the Congressional Research Service reported that in FY 2008, the fiscal year before the TVPRA was passed, CBP encountered fewer than 10,000 UACs at the Southwest border, mostly Mexican nationals. By FY 2009, when the TVPRA bill was signed, the UAC number grew to around 20,000, 82 percent of them Mexican nationals, and just 17 percent from the non-contiguous Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The number of UACs entering illegally kept growing thereafter, with Border Patrol apprehending more than 68,500 of them in FY 2014. By then, however, just 23 percent of UACs came from Mexico and 77 percent from the Northern Triangle.

UAC arrivals rose dramatically in 2021 when President Joe Biden exempted unaccompanied minors from Title 42, the COVID-19 no-entry policy that allowed immigration authorities to immediately return illegal immigrants to Mexico. In August, border officials referred an average of 431 children per day to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) which forced the Biden administration to reopen a former work site in Carrizo Springs, Texas to house children as traditional shelters reached capacity. This marked the second time in less than two months that HHS reopened a so-called “influx care facility” for unaccompanied children. Last month, HHS restarted housing migrant children at another former work camp for oil workers in Pecos, Texas, shuttered in 2021.

The number of children placed with distant relatives increased between 2021 and 2022, according to a June 2023 HHS audit. The audit also found that HHS released 344 children to sponsors who were already hosting three or more unaccompanied minors, contributing to advocates’ fears that some patrons allow children to be exploited for cheap labor, a concern that a New York Times investigative report confirmed. Among the jobs the minor children were tasked to perform, The Times found, were dangerous slave labor positions like mopping up on slaughterhouse floors, operating heavy machinery, and prostituting their under-age child prostitution. The minors obtained their industrial jobs by presenting stolen Social Security cards or falsified Social Security numbers.

Last year in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Josh Hawley grilled ORR director Robin Dunn Marcos about UAC exploitation. Hawley pressed for answers about the ongoing child migrant crisis at the southern border and the 85,000 children that the Biden Administration cannot locate. Marcos could not answer any of Hawley’s questions. But the hearing revealed that ORR routinely failed to perform background checks on the adults in the homes, does not do home visits, and that Xavier Becerra, HHS secretary, ignored and then fired subordinates who warned of risks in the placement process. The secretary told Marcos that if she “could not increase the number of discharges, he would find someone who would,” and “This is not the way you run an assembly line,” an inference that the priority is placing children, and their safety is secondary. Senator Hawley expressed dismay over the administration’s criminal neglect of UAC’s. He said “The kids are in danger. The kids are in slavery. They are being exploited. And it should not happen in the United States of America.” The senator concluded that the U.S. is, to its shame, the biggest child trafficker in the world, Last year, Senator Hawley introduced the Corporate Responsibly for Child Labor Elimination Act of 2023” and wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding that his agency locate the missing 85,000 children. But congressional hearings, investigative reports, and proposed legislation will not end the child border crisis. While Biden dawdles on border security, his administration will continue to allow criminal child abuse, human trafficking, and the enrichment of Mexican cartels.

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

Biden and Mayorkis Created Largest Child Trafficking Ring in US History Says Senator

Today’s Boston Not JFK’s

By Joe Guzzardi

Journalists who cover the immigration beat have a maxim: “Never say you’ve been witness to every conceivable violation of immigration law; you’ll soon be proven wrong.” In her relatively short two-and-a-half-year period as Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu has, with her outrageous anti-public safety positions, alienated large swaths of her constituents and established a new low for wokeness, a dubious distinction considering how extreme political correctness has devastated the country. Like the nation’s other uber-progressive mayors, New York’s Alvin Bragg and Chicago’s Richard Johnson, Wu has brought a once great and historic city into chaos. Wu supports decriminalizing shoplifting, larceny, disorderly conduct, receiving stolen property, driving with a suspended license, breaking and entering with property damage, wanton and malicious destruction of property, threats, a minor in possession of alcohol, marijuana possession, and possession with intent to distribute. Another way to consider Wu’s goal is that she champions legalizing shoplifting, larceny, etc.

Wu, a Taiwanese immigrants’ daughter, is a Chicago native who moved to Boston to attend Harvard University and then Harvard Law School. At Harvard Law, Wu became Elizabeth Warren’s protégé and a campaign assistant in her former professor’s successful 2012 U.S. senate bid. Growing up in Chicago, Wu was a big league Senator Barack Obama aficionado; her affiliation with Warren added the final touches to Wu’s radicalization.

In 2013, Bostonians elected Wu to the City Council. By 2018, she had easily ascended to City Council president. When the 2021 mayoral election rolled around, Wu was an established Boston darling. After filling out Progressive Massachusetts’ “2021 Boston Mayoral Candidate Questionnaire,” the Boston electorate had no doubts about Wu’s soft-on-crime agenda. Progressive Massachusetts’ identifies as an organization that “intends to transform Massachusetts into a bold laboratory for progressive state initiatives.”

A sampling of the questions and Wu’s answers: Q. Do you support shuttering the Boston Police gang database? A. Yes; Q. Do you support…the do-not-prosecute list that includes robbery and other crimes currently subject to prosecution? A. Yes. In the questionnaire, Wu also outlined her other progressive ideas including giving illegal aliens voting privileges in local elections. Despite Wu’s well-known radical agenda, she ran virtually unopposed; Wu coasted to victory.

Bostonians cannot be surprised then when Wu kept her promise to radicalize their city. Wu has been ripped over her tone-deaf and frivolous plan to give kids as young as 11 and illegal aliens voting rights when it comes time to decide how millions of dollars in public funds are doled out. The city’s new proposed participatory budget voting process, which will go into effect in July, gives ordinary Bostonians the ability to decide how a portion of the city’s budget will be spent, the Boston Herald reported. Last month, during a committee hearing reviewing Wu’s fiscal year 2025 budget, City Councilor Ed Flynn, a Democrat, slammed the mayor’s proposed new process, specifically the involvement of children and illegal aliens. Flynn also aired his grievances in a letter to the Office of Participatory Budgeting’s director, Renato Castelo, in which he flagged his “unequivocal and vehement opposition” to the looming process. “During this time of great fiscal uncertainty — with a study warning that remote work policies and the city’s declining commercial property values may cost us $500 million in revenue annually, as well as a subsequent proposal to also tax commercial property at a higher rate — now more than ever, it is critical that we show the taxpayers of Boston that we take our financial responsibilities seriously,” Flynn wrote. “Allowing children [and illegal aliens] to decide the usage of taxpayer dollars would do just the opposite, and be viewed as tone-deaf, unserious and wholly inappropriate by my constituents.” Boston reportedly has 672,000 residents with 28.2% being foreign-born, according to the city website.

The Boston Policy Institute confirmed Flynn’s grim outlook on Wu’s potentially crushing problems. In its analysis, BPI concluded that Boston is likely to face a cumulative revenue shortfall of more than $1 billion in the next five years, and with no clear prospect for recovery, budgetary deficits could persist for decades, triggering a long-term decline in public services and economic vitality. Boston has few ways to compensate for lost tax revenue. Massachusetts precludes cities from introducing local sales and income taxes; fully offsetting the decline in commercial real estate would require a 25 percent to 30 percent increase in residential property taxes.

The illegal alien population that Wu is eager to grant voting privileges has taken over Boston’s predominantly black Roxbury neighborhood. Thanks to President Joe Biden’s open border agenda and Wu’s collaboration, Roxbury has lost its community recreation center. Roxbury is nearly 57 percent black, almost 30 percent Latino, and only six percent white; its $30,654 median income is less than Boston’s $52,433. More illegal alien arrivals and therefore more Boston citizen displacement goes on every hour of every day. “We [Boston] continue to see migrants at the airport. They come to Logan [Airport] a number of ways. They also arrive at Logan at all hours,” a Massport representative told Boston 25 News. The numbers of migrants being housed at Logan often spike to more than 100. Envision the mess Boston will be after illegal immigrants cast votes that will, with Wu’s blessing, determine the city’s financial future.

For now, Wu’s push to legalize dozens of previously punishable crimes, as well as promoting voting privileges for illegal aliens and sixth graders put her in undisputed first place for the mayor who has consistently proven that she has no regard for Bostonians’ personal safety. Wu’s other and more compelling problem is that violating 8 U.S. Code § 1324 – “Bringing in and harboring certain aliens,” is a felony. Wu is clearly guilty of harboring, not that anyone in the Department of Justice cares. In anticipation of the 2025 election, Wu’s critics have launched a “Save Our City” campaign. The scuttlebutt about who, if anyone, would be willing to face Wu has already started. Some speculate that Wu’s greatest challenge may come from the left, a move toward governance that Boston could not survive in any form that John F. Kennedy could recognize.

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

Today’s Boston Not JFK’s