Category: Guest Authors

The Kamala Conundrum

By Joe Guzzardi

Throughout her career, Kamala Harris has benefited from the support of friends in high places. Michelle and Barack Obama’s recent endorsement of Harris for president, despite Barack’s original fear that she couldn’t beat Donald Trump, is the latest example. An insider revealed that Obama withheld his Harris endorsement because “he knows she can’t win,” and he said that, in Obama’s opinion, “she can’t navigate the landmines that are ahead of her.”

The Obamas’ backing gives Harris’ campaign a needed boost. But, looking back, Harris’ political ascendancy is directly tied to her two-year dalliance with Willie Brown in the 1990s while he was Speaker of the California Assembly. The speakership is one of the state’s most powerful positions whichcontrols the legislative flow of bills that either do or don’t reach the governor’s desk. Married but separated, Brown was twice Harris’ age; he was 60 and she, 29. Brown appointed Harris to two coveted state panels—the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission—that together reportedly earned her more than $400,000 over five years, $825,000 today.

But Brown’s most valuable favors were to connect Harris to the Democrat party’s elites and deep-pocketed donors. Brown also actively promoted Harris’ campaigns, first for San Francisco attorney general, then California’s attorney general, and finally the U.S. senate. Days after Senator Barbara Boxer announced that she would not seek re-election in 2016, Harris jumped into the fray. Antonio Villaraigosa, a prominent, popular Hispanic politician and former Los Angeles Mayor, hinted that he was poised to enter the race also. But Brown cut Villaraigosa off before he could get started. With endorsements from Brown, Boxer, Obama, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Governor Jerry Brown, Harris cruised over Orange County’s U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez, winning 66 percent of the vote.

Immediately after her victory in one-party California, the always-friendly media began touting her as 2020 presidential timber. Harris’ announcement that she would compete for the presidential nomination originally generated enthusiasm, but the excitement soon fizzled out; Harris’ campaign was a complete bust. Her abrasive personality created constant staff turnover, and Harris dropped out without winning a single delegate. She blamed her failure on the lack of financial resources, which translates to an inability to convince donors that she would be a winner. Looking back over her record, analysts conclude that, on her own, she has never won anything and least of all the 2024 Democratic primary.

Harris is in the midst of a lovefest with the media which is furiously withholding the truth about her radical left record which, according to GovTrack. earned her the dubious most liberal senator title—further left than even Senator Bernie Sanders  and Elizabeth Warren. Shortly after Harris entered the presidential race by default, GovTrack took its ranking down, one of the many coverups that will mark her presidential quest.

GovTrack’s trickery aside, the Internet is packed with her radical statements that include endorsing the American Families Plan, a nearly $2 trillion pre-K childcare package, forgiving student debt, ending fracking, pushing climate change—she was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal—offering free four-year public college education for low-and middle income American students, continued funding for the unwinnable Ukraine-Russia war,  providing Medicare for all including illegal aliens, decriminalizing illegal immigration, abolishing the police, maintaining sanctuary cities’ status, “re-imagining” ICE, ending cash bail and eliminating the death penalty. While she likes to portray herself as tough on crime, four months after Harris was sworn in as AG, gang member David Hill shot and killed police Officer Isaac Espinoza in April 2004. Harris declined to charge the shooter with a capital offense, thus sparing him from the death penalty. Her decision rankled California’s political leadership including California’s senior senator Dianne Feinstein who called for Hill’s execution.

Harris, a San Francisco progressive, will have to do some slick talking to wiggle out of her advocacy for those costly and, among the majority, unpopular political proposals. On immigration and the border, however, Harris has no escape route. To make Harris more palatable to middle-of-the-road voters, her supporters insist that she was never the “border czar.” They falsely claim that Biden tasked her with identifying the root causes for the invasion. As the old political axiom goes, when candidates are explaining, they are losing. The indisputable fact remains that Harris never went to the border, had unproductive meetings with Northern Triangle leaders, and stood by to watch illegal immigration overwhelm major U.S. metropolises with murder, mayhem and fentanyl deaths. The root cause for illegal aliens’ journey north is Biden’s and Harris’ refusal to enforce immigration law.

Even conservative media has done a dismal job reporting on the criminality inherent in open borders. To allow and encourage illegal immigration, as Biden and Harris have, violates the Constitution and is an impeachable offense. During the three and a half years of keeping the border open to a global influx of illegal aliens and rewarding them with work permission and other perks, Biden, Harris and Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas have initiated America’s demographic overhaul which would continue with a four-year Harris term. Harris recommends that, to solve the border fiasco, illegal aliens residing in the U.S. be given “a meaningful path to citizenship” —an amnesty which would mean more chain migration. Princeton University scholars calculated that when immigrants become citizens, they petition on average three family members to join them in the U.S. Amnestied illegal aliens will either grow their existing families or start new ones-which means more urban sprawl, more natural resources depleted, and more competition for affirmative benefits.

Polling consistently shows that immigration is voters’ top concern. Harris’ election would mean four more years of the same open borders and the associated violent crime that has plagued the nation since Biden entered the White House.

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

The Kamala Conundrum

The Kamala Conundrum

The Kamala Conundrum

Trump-Vance Must Restore Fairness To Betrayed American Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

The Donald J. Trump-J.D. Vance ticket gives promise to working Americans who the Biden administration has maligned through its open border agenda, and improper granting of parole with work authorization to millions of illegal immigrants. The legal and illegal immigrants that have arrived since President Joe Biden’s first days in the White House have dominated job creation in the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Center for Immigration Studies Steve Camarota’s research into jobs data found that since 2019’s fourth quarter, the period just before COVID-19 devastated the U.S. economy, 2.7 million more people are working. The raw statistics give false credence to the Biden administration’s boast that the U.S. economy is strong.

But immigrants, not U.S. workers, led in job gains totals, an important fact omitted from the White House’s glowing economic press releases. Simply stated, since 2019, all the net job growth has gone to immigrants. The number of working immigrants since 2019 is up by 2.9 million, while 183,000 fewer U.S. citizens were employed during the same period.

The GOP ticket—Trump and Vance—have an opportunity to right three decades of wrongs perpetrated against American workers. Low-skilled Americans are forced to compete with under-educated illegal aliens for entry level jobs that would help them support their families and get a foot in the labor market, essential for moving up the socioeconomic ladder. Black American workers are the biggest victims of mass immigration, and not only on the hiring line. Kathleen Wells, Black America for Immigration Reform’ s Executive Director, observed that in New York City, America’s most expensive city in which to rent a hotel room, 135 of its 700 hotels provide taxpayer funded housing to illegal immigrants. Prepaid debit cards add to the generous benefits package available to illegal immigrants, but not to black Americans. Similar injustices play out across America—in Chicago, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, and Portland.

Skilled U.S. workers are not immune from foreign labor job displacement. A wide variety of employment-based visas provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of professional employees that will work in tech, accounting, and education. The most commonly used visas are the H-1B, the J-1, and the L-1. The overseas employees—read, cheaper— take well-paying, white-collar jobs from more experienced American workers.

The time is overdue for American workers’ resumes that reflect their skills and experiences to return to their rightful position at the top of employers’ inboxes and not be cast aside in favor of candidates that unscrupulous employers will hire for the lowest wage. Trump and Vance are aware that new jobs must be filled by U.S. citizens. In his GOP convention address, Vance reminded the audience that he grew up in Middletown, Ohio, “a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.”

Continuing, Vance said:” When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico. When I was a sophomore in high school that same career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart deal that destroyed even more good American middle-class jobs.” For more than a quarter of a century, the craven, D.C. privileged has done the bidding of donors and consistently spurned working Americans in pursuit of their own narrow self-interests. Biden may be gone but whoever replaces him at the top of the Democratic ticket will have the same global agenda. Trump and Vance can end the harm done to American workers; reversing the anti-American sentiment must be their first priority.

Monday, January 20, 2025, Inauguration Day, is the time to for Trump and Vance to begin to keep their campaign pledges to U.S. workers.

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

Trump-Vance Must Restore Fairness To Betrayed American Workers

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