Category: Guest Authors

 Dems Will Dump Biden?

By Joe Guzzardi

As of today, Washington D.C.’s conventional wisdom holds that the Democrats prefer a 2024 candidate other than President Joe Biden but feel that the incumbent has earned the right to run. Nonsense! Under no circumstances will the power-hungry Democrats let Biden, unwilling to engage primary debate challengers, and refusing to campaign in the time-honored fashion, again become the party’s standard bearer. Seven months remain until Chicago hosts the Democratic National Convention, an eternity in politics, and doubly so if party leaders and donors perceive that presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump continues his upswing while Biden drops even further in national polling.

Influential Democrats and deep-pocketed party supporters could lean hard on Biden to withdraw gracefully with their promise that on his way out, they would hail him as a modern-day FDR. If Biden resists, Democrats could play hardball, a technique the party is familiar with. Since there are no secrets in Washington, everyone who’s anyone knows about Biden and his family’s nefarious dealings. Threaten to leak internal dope on the Biden family to the Republican-led Judiciary and Oversight committees and Biden might change his mind. The scenario may appear improbable but it’s not impossible.

Should Biden exit, voluntarily or otherwise, that would solve only half of the Democrats problems. The other half would be to choose a viable replacement. Many of the names floated don’t resonate with the general public—Vice-President Kamala Harris, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Energy Secretary and former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm. All have net negative polling.

Still available is California Governor Gavin Newsom, anxiously waiting in the wings, fingers crossed, ready to pounce should the opportunity present itself. But if Newsom is tapped, a vexing hurdle remains—the governor would need to script a platform that will connect nationally, a tough task given his abysmal governance record.

Typically, a stumping candidate highlights his successes. Not only does Newsom have no tangible, tout-worthy achievements, his failures and misjudgments are colossal. The elitist, multimillion net worth governor will never shake his Napa Valley French Laundry birthday party fiasco. During the COVID-19 pandemic when Newsom shutdown Orange County beaches, he dined maskless with lobbyists. The incident, which showed Newsom’s disregard for his constituents, will haunt him. The dinner is a small potatoes blotch compared to California’s exploding homelessness, wide-spread poverty, soaring housing prices, rotten public education system that ranks 44^th nationwide, rampant smash-and-grab crime, and dramatic cost of living spikes.

Although California’s bullet train fiasco has dropped from the national news, the story reflects another costly Newsom blunder. Four years ago, when Newsom unveiled his scaled-down concept for the bullet train, he proposed constructing a 171-mile starter line in the Central Valley that would begin operating in 2030 and cost $22.8 billion. Today, the projected costs are $35 billion, and exceed by $10 billion future committed funding. Adding to the bullet train’s woes: an official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25%, and the operating schedule has been pushed further into the future. Waste, waste, and more waste on a project that Californians didn’t want, and few would benefit from.

Newsom’s gravest miscalculation is, during a sustained southern border illegal alien invasion, his immigration advocacy. California’s official government website prominently includes a section captioned “California for All” which reads as follows: “every person can achieve a better life regardless of where they start out,” an open invitation to illegal immigrants. Newsom is out of step with public opinion. At a time when the nation is coping with an estimated eight million aliens released into the interior since Biden’s inauguration and coming from more than 150 nations, Newsom as of January 1, will provide all low-income illegal aliens, regardless of age, with Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program.

As many as 764,000 illegal aliens could be added to Medi-Cal, costing California taxpayers an extra $3.1 billion annually. The rub is that pursuant to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, illegal aliens are generally barred from receiving federally funded means-tested public benefits like Medicaid. Therefore, the burdensome cost falls solely on California’s residents, a foolish, inexplicable decision since the state is sinking under a $68 billion deficit.

Deservedly, California is synonymous with failure. Residents are fleeing for more hospitable states. Newsom would have to be a magician to sell his California as a model for the other 49 states. If Democrats examine Newsom’s résumé and conclude he’s not electable, then they may be stuck, like it or not, with an equally unelectable Biden.

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

STEM Degrees Not Worth Effort, Expense

By Joe Guzzardi

Little by little, the truth about academic life on university campuses is leaking out. Although not as dramatic or headline-grabbing as the Harvard, Penn, and MIT scandals, the myth that science, technology, engineering and math degrees (STEM) will lead to a well-paid, white-collar job is gradually being debunked.

In his Los Angeles Times opinion commentary, U.C. San Diego sociology professor and author of “Wasted Education: How We Fail Our Graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math”, John D. Skrentny, exposed a STEM degree’s true worth in the employment market—considerably less than advertised, and perhaps not worth the monies spent on exorbitant tuition fees.

Long-hyped as a path to a big-ticket IT job, and with employers and the federal government’s tacit endorsement that helped promote more foreign-born labor to displace U.S. workers, STEM classes’ popularity soared. Another carrot that encouraged young adults to enroll: the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that STEM jobs would increase 8 percent by 2029 compared with 3.7 for all other occupations. From 2006 to 2015, bachelor’s degrees in the STEM fields rose from 22 percent of the baccalaureate degrees awarded to 30 percent of the total, the highest level since 1987 when detailed national record-keeping began.

But the Census Bureau’s June 2021 report refuted the popular narrative. STEM degrees don’t guarantee a coveted job in the prestigious science, technology, engineering and math fields. Among the 50 million employed college graduates ages 25 to 64 in 2019, 37 percent earned a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering but only 14 percent worked in a STEM occupation. Moreover, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, in its 2023 analysis, found that STEM degrees held by diverse graduates hardly moved the needle. Despite corporations’ vocal commitment to DEI, black, Hispanic, American Indian, and disabled persons remain dramatically under-represented in tech.

Although warnings about pro-STEM fallacies have been reported for at least a decade, they’ve fallen on deaf ears. Forbes journalist and Duke University School of Law J.D. George Leef wrote in 2014:

“Interest groups that want more STEM education, research funding and workers know how to capitalize on that belief to get politicians to enact the policies they want. Even through there is nothing approaching a [labor shortage] crisis, they keep lobbying as if we have a dire one…Strong business and educational groups lobby for nice-sounding policies that benefit themselves, frequently employing dubious arguments and misleading claims. The costs of the resulting pro-STEM policies are dispersed among the public, and fall particularly hard on the unfortunate individuals who invest a lot of money and years of their lives in pursuit of credentials that are apt to become almost worthless.”  (“True Or False: America Desperately Needs More STEM Workers,” by George Leef, Forbes, June 10, 2014)

The year after Forbes published Leef’s critique, Jesse Jackson traveled to Silicon Valley where he found that its overall workforce was only 30 percent female, 3 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent black. Countless studies from respected academics and prominent think tanks came to the same conclusion—U.S. tech workers are effectively shut out. But only a smattering of the published research, including Skrentny’s op-ed, address the most obvious reason that American minorities are consistently kept out of white-collar jobs. Employers prefer to hire younger, less qualified, cheaper foreign nationals, mostly from Pakistan and China, that work on H-1B visas, the so-called guest workers who rarely go home. In the 10 years since Leef, Jackson, and countless other scholars have sounded alarm bells, hundreds of thousands of H-1B visa workers have entered the domestic labor market to take jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. STEM grads.

Year-after-fiscal year, and regardless of economic conditions, the federal government approves 85,000 H-1B visass. In late 2022 and throughout 2023, Google, Amazon, Meta, and other tech giants laid off thousands of workers. And 2024 is off to a similar start as Duolingo, Twitch, and Discord made deep cut while Amazon and Google continued their 2023  significant firings. Despite the layoffs, H-1B approvals continued.

As long as H-1B visa workers are readily available to employers, and as Artificial Intelligence makes a greater, ever-growing societal impact, STEM degrees will become increasingly less valuable on job-seekers’ resumes.

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

STEM Degrees Not Worth Effort, Expense

Ted Williams Rescues Bush 41 Campaign

By Joe Guzzardi

Baseball fans recognize Ted Williams as one of the sport’s all-time Cooperstown Hall of Fame legends, a fearless pilot who served in the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps during World War II and in Korea. Less well-known is that Ted is also a Fly Fisherman Hall of Fame inductee.  Williams caught black marlin in New Zealand and tiger fish in the Zambezi River in Mozambique. In Ted’s opinion, only three fish were worthy of true sportsmen— tarpon, bonefish, and Atlantic salmon. Considered by Williams the triple crown of fishing, he had caught and released over 1,000 of each by 1982.

“The Kid’s” inner circle—his family and close friends—knew that Williams had another passion. Williams was a political junkie.  Born in 1918 in San Diego, Williams grew up in conservative California. Beginning in 1890, and lasting for about a 100-year period, Republicans consistently occupied Sacramento’s Governor’s Mansion, and the state’s voters consistently sent Republicans to the U.S. Congress. Williams most admired President Calvin Coolidge, the former Massachusetts governor who favored tax cuts and limited government spending.

No surprise then that when Vice President George H.W. Bush called on Williams to campaign on his behalf in the 1988 New Hampshire primary, Ted accepted, and thereby changed America’s presidential history. Setting the scene, President Ronald Reagan’s two-terms were up, and Bush was part of a crowded GOP primary card. The Iowa caucus’ outcome had been a shock to the Bush campaign. The Vice President finished a distant third to Kansas Senator Bob Dole and televangelist Reverend Pat Robinson, the newly formed Christian Coalition’s favorite. With only a week between Iowa and New Hampshire, Bush was floundering. The Manchester-Union Leader, a powerful conservative New Hampshire voice, labeled Bush “a wimp,” and endorsed Delaware governor Pierre S. du Pont.  Jack Kemp, the Buffalo Bills’ former quarterback, was also vying for the GOP nomination.

Although Bush had done his legwork and visited the Granite State frequently during 1988, when primary week began, he polled five points behind Dole. Another failure would have put Bush permanently out of the running. John Sununu, former New Hampshire governor and Bush’s campaign reached out to Williams. Neither Bush nor Sununu personally knew Williams, but they had heard of his strong political opinions. A liberal on social policy, Williams was a conservative on fiscal and foreign policy. Although he distrusted all politicians, he particularly hated the Kennedys and consistently voted the GOP ticket.

Sununu phoned Williams and persuaded him to fly to New Hampshire from Florida where he had been fishing. Williams’ presence with Bush, who played second fiddle to “The Kid,” changed the game, and helped put Bush in the White House. Voters turned out in droves to get a glance at their beloved Boston Red Sox hero. One gifted Williams an antique bamboo fishing rod. Ted signed autographs, and introduced his new friend, Bush, as “the next president of the U.S.”

In the end, Bush ended up with 59,290 votes; Dole, 44,797; and Kemp, 20,144.  Campaign donations returned, and Bush was on his way to the White House. Bush, a World War II pilot and Yale University baseball standout, and Williams became friendly. Bush kept his old first baseman’s glove at the ready in his desk drawer, a quirk that endeared him to Williams.

Now Bush’s chief of staff, Sununu organized two major events that included Williams. First, a 1991 Rose Garden lunch on the All-Star game’s afternoon with Joe DiMaggio to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Joe’s 56-game hitting streak and Ted’s .406 average. After lunch, they flew Air Force One to Toronto to watch the game, a 4-2 win for the American League. Second, also in 1991, Bush presented Williams with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the rare times Ted agreed to wear a tie.

Historians acknowledge that Williams was the key factor in putting Bush on the presidency’s path. On November 8, 1988, Bush won a landslide against the Democrat candidate, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, 426 electoral votes to 111, an impossible outcome without Teddy Ball Game’s intervention.

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

Ted Williams Rescues Bush 41 Campaign

Mayorkas Bobs and Weaves Around the Truth

By Joe Guzzardi

In September 2022, weeks before the mid-term election, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the GOP’s “Commitment to America,” a promise that a newly elected GOP majority would create an “economy that’s strong,” “a nation that’s safe,” “a future that’s built on freedom” and “a government that’s accountable.” Expanding the safe-nation vow, Republicans pledged to “secure the southern border,” “reduce crime and stop Fentanyl” and “defend our national security.”

The GOP squeezed out a narrow House majority, and could do no better than a 50-50 Senate tie leaving deciding votes to Vice-President Kamala Harris. During the ensuing 15 months, month-over-month border conditions consistently worsened. When McCarthy made his announcement, just before fiscal year 2022 ended, 2.8 illegal aliens had crossed the border, a then-record. The following year, a House Committee on Homeland Security released its report titled “Startling Stats” which found that in FY 2023, CBP arrested 35,433 aliens with criminal convictions or outstanding warrants, including 598 known gang members, 178 of those being MS-13 members. CBP, including its Air and Marine Operations, seized 27,293 pounds of fentanyl coming across the Southwest border, an 88% increase over FY 2022, and  enough to kill, the committee estimated, about 6 billion people. So much for the “Commitment to America” and its promise to secure the southern border, stop Fentanyl, and defend national security.

For months, congressional Republicans have made rumblings about impeaching Mayorkas, but their words were empty. The low point came when, in November 2022, California’s Tom McLintock, the House Judiciary’s Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, joined with Democrats and seven other Republicans to vote against a resolution to impeach Mayorkas. When, two years into the invasion, a leading Republican who oversees “immigration integrity” teamed up with committed open borders Democrats like House Speaker Joaquim Jeffries and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, enforcement is a pipe dream.

From the instant Biden signed his Day One Executive Orders that undid  former President Donald Trump’s actions to restore prudent immigration, migrant caravans moved north. Interviewed along the way, the illegal aliens, also encouraged by Biden’s campaign promise to welcome asylum seekers and to end deportations, expressed confidence that work authorization and employment awaited them. Within a few weeks, the migrants’ predictions came true. At that relatively early juncture in what was Mayorkas’ clearly brazen and treasonous disregard for federal immigration law, the House should have impeached the DHS Secretary. In the end, the motion would have failed. But an early House effort might have moved the border chaos higher up on the public’s radar. Instead, unchecked, Mayorkas’ unconstitutional dismantling of established immigration law at the border and the interior accelerated.

After months of back and forth, the House appears ready to begin the impeachment process against Mayorkas. On their trip to Eagle Pass, the 600+ House delegation that included House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., said that his panel will officially begin an effort this month to impeach Mayorkas, an indefatigable witness. In his multiple appearances before the House and national television audiences, Mayorkas has proven adept at giving vague answers to specific questions or avoiding any response.

Most recent example: During a January 4 nationally televised interview, Mayorkas refused to state exactly how many illegal aliens immigration officials apprehended crossing the US-Mexico border between ports of entry have been released into the interior under the Biden administration. Although Mayorkas admitted he knew the answer, he refused to share the data. Little wonder that Mayorkas was tight-lipped. The House Judiciary Committee knows the answer that Mayorkas dutifully concealed. Since Biden took office Jan. 20, 2021, at least 3.8 million illegal aliens either have been released into the nation’s interior or successfully evaded Customs and Border Protection agents to enter the country, a population that exceeds that of 22 states and the District of Columbia.

When pressed to provide a solution, Mayorkas invariably points to Congress to fix the nation’s “broken immigration system,” three words that translate to amnesty. But if existing immigration laws had been enforced for the last five decades rather than disregarded in varying degrees by eight consecutive Republican and Democratic administrations—Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, Trump, and most catastrophically, Biden—sovereign America wouldn’t be in its current dire straits. Secure borders aren’t a Republican or Democratic issue, but a national U.S. priority.

Cato the Elder, a Roman Senator at the time of the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage is said to have used the phrase, “Ceterum (autem) censeo Carthaginem esse delendam” (“Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed”) as the conclusion to all his speeches, to push for the war with their long time enemy and rival.

It would be great if every congressman would in a similar vein state, “Mayorkas impediendus est!” or Mayorkas must be impeached!

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

Mayorkas Bobs and Weaves Around The Truth

Mayorkas Bobs and Weaves Around The Truth