Alternative history can be a tricky concept. I suspect both major parties, if they had use of a Tardis would want to redo the 2022 PA Senate primary, and select different U.S. senatorial candidates. Dave McCormick comes to mind, and you can fill in any name for Fetterman. Watching the one lone debate between Fetterman and Oz made me glad we only had one to watch.
There were any number of alternative-party and write-in candidates, who, unfortunately, had the same chance as any Republican running in Swarthmore — that is, zero to none.
However, when I came across one Everett Stern, I had to stop and wish it were possible. This is the same Everett Stern who blew the whistle on his employer, HSBC Bank which was discovered to be only aiding drug dealers and terrorist groups. The story was profiled in the Netflix documentary “Dirty Money” and in a Rolling Stone article.
Stern is also the founder and director of Tactical Rabbit, a private Intelligence agency.
Stern’s postions were:
On gun control: I believe in keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals and in the hands of law-abiding citizens.
On national defense: It also means not getting into wars that are not in the interests of the U.S. and its allies, which he sees as “a waste of blood and treasure”, that diverts “funding and investment” from our critically important problems and challenges”.
On personal responsibility and rights: It is not the responsibility of government to pressure corporations like Facebook and Twitter to restrict the speech of those of whom they do not approve.
However, Stern “decided” not to run, in favor of endorsing Fetterman. Undoubtedly, there is some hidden history there.
It is to be hoped that some of the better candidates who were defeated, such as Frank Agovino and too many others to mention, will choose to run for office again.
Full disclosure: I saw the line “a better man than Fetterman” on a Dr. Oz sign.
There were five incumbents who won’t be returning to the Pa House after the results of November’s election. Two of them, one from each party, were incumbents of three decades’ standing.
Democrat Paul F. Friel, Jr., won 55.6 percent of the total votes, while incumbent Timothy F. Hennessey garnered only 44.24 percent.
Timothy F. Hennessey was first elected to Pennsylvania House District 26 in 1992. Bob Casey, Sr., was then the governor. The newly redistricted PA House District 26 now covers Phoenixville and 10 other Chesco municipalities.
Friel cited many factors for his victory, including the redistricting of House seats to favor the Democrats, the importance of the abortion issue, and the appeal of the individual candidates at the top of the ticket.
Timothy F. Hennessey has been active throughout his terms in office. Most recently, his safe-driving bill was signed into law. In addition, along with others, he advocated for funding for Montgomery County’s New Missions Child Advocacy Center, and he has been involved with other issues including the issue of driverless cars. See his website for more details.
On Dec. 4, 2021, Hennessey was one of the 64 Republicans who signed a four-point objections bill challenging Pennsylvania’s electoral votes in Congress on Janury 6. Hennessey was later quoted as saying he was “shocked and appalled by” the violence of January 6. He went on to say “the election is over, Biden won”.
Friel is a member of the Owen J. Roberts (OJR) School Board. He says OJR hasn’t been caught up in CRT (Critical Race Theory) or gender and trans issues. In fact, OJR hasn’t changed its stance on these policies for at least a decade.
The other long-term State House incumbent to lose his position on Nov. 8 was Democrat Chris Sainato of Lawrence County in the 9th District.
Emboldened by their better-than-anticipated mid-term election performance, the Democratic Party is entering the Lame Duck session with an aggressive agenda that includes one of it favorite goals – amnesty. Democrats will control the Upper Chamber during the 118th Congress, but the GOP by the narrowest margin – a handful of seats – will have the edge in the House.
The Democrats’ strong showing inspired President Biden to unequivocally pronounce that he plans to do “nothing“ differently during the two years that remain in his first term. Biden interprets the election results as an endorsement of his policies, especially at the border and with his quest to legalize as many illegal aliens as possible.
The status quo, especially as it relates to enforcement, is exactly what’s happening. Just days after Biden’s stand pat commitment, the Border Patrol reported that agents had at least 230,678 known October encounters, exclusive of nearly 1 million known gotaways, compared to 159,113 last October and 69,032 in October 2020. The October 2022 total, driven by Cubans and Nicaraguans, is the highest in Department of Homeland Security history.
Immediately after the Thanksgiving recess, all eyes will be focused on the Lame Duck session that will provide a chance for Biden to finalize his legislative objective. And Republicans may be willing to lend a helping hand, a possibility enhanced with the re-election of pro-amnesty Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Although amnesty goes against most Americans’ wishes, Congress dismisses voters’ concerns, and presses on.
Common sense dictates that already present illegal aliens shouldn’t be granted amnesty until, at a minimum, the DHS seals the border against the new illegal alien wave that includes thousands of unaccompanied minors. But looking ahead to a possible 2024 re-election bid, the president’s advisors are scratching together a possible slogan, “Promises Kept.” Since immigration doesn’t fall into the “kept” category, at least in the White House’s view, Biden’s advisors perceive the need to forge ahead on amnesty.
Earlier this year, the House laid amnesty’s foundation when it passed the American Dream and Promise Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, amnesty for about 2.1 million illegally present farm workers. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – DACA – and farm workers are the two top amnesty priorities. Democrats have already written a game plan to send DACA legislation to the Senate that would amnesty more than 4 million illegal immigrants before their House majority expires. A sidebar: legislation to grant amnesty to deferred action recipients has, since 2001 when it was first introduced, consistently failed to get congressional majorities.
Just behind deferred action legalization’s priority are the farm workers who would be tied, if the amnesty passes, to agricultural employment for years – indentured servitude – with the carrot being eventual citizenship. Despite the bill’s title which suggests modernization, no such feature is included. Modernization means using artificial intelligence, the bane of donors who support keeping the ag industry dependent on cheap, stoop labor.
Both DACA and the farm act require ten Senate yeas which the House is unlikely to get. Without the ten necessary upper chamber votes, amnesty advocates could attach either or both DACA and the farm act to must-pass, omnibus legislation – the landmine that immigration restrictionists most fear.
Nothing stops the amnesty lobby – not 9/11, not the mortgage crisis and not dismal employment markets. When amnesty advocates have friends in high places such as the White House, the Senate and the House, pressure for passing amnesty is, as proven during the days leading to the 2022 Lame Duck, intense. Amnesty recipients obtain lifetime valid employment permits, a coveted affirmative benefit that expands the labor market and hinders blue-collar Americans, including blacks, Hispanics and other minorities, the constituency that Congress deceivingly purports to care about.
Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
PECO is planning a $12 million investment in Swarthmore as part of a larger statewide electricity initiative that calls for removing lots of trees.
You can call the plan “We Kill Trees To Go Green”
The current utility poles are 35 feet tall, and PECO wants to replace them with fifty footers.
The assessment at the Nov. 15 borough council is that 124 trees must go, most of which are decades old. PECO promises to replace them with 2-and-a-half-foot saplings
PECO refuses to use underground electrical lines it was revealed despite their use in Springfield and at Swarthmore College.
PECO cites higher costs as among the reasons they don’t want to tunnel in the dirt in the borough.
Swarthmore Borough Council has been in negotiations with PECO, but has not found a way forward as of last night’s meeting.
In keeping with our tradition, Swarthmore residents are beginning to organize, with letters and phone calls as the first salvo in the battle.
While PECO has not approached my block yet, but we don’t know that they won’t. To be clear, my household is not involved with the organizing.
There are numerous other examples of PECO’s attempts to destroy trees in a similar fashion. A few are listed below.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s new chief executive officer, and the firings he immediately called for that included H-1B visa holders, as well as the tech industry’s mass, across-the-board layoffs, raise a three-decade-old question: should the H-1B visa be eliminated, and should U.S. tech workers be put first in line for the white-collar, well-paid jobs?
Musk, who completed his $44 billion Twitter takeover last month, declared that he would end lifetime bans from his platform and tweeted that diverse viewpoints would be welcome. He has a golden opportunity not only to end censorship and restore free speech as he’s promised, but to also hire U.S. tech workers when workforce needs again grow.
Going forward, Musk would have a chance to replace the Twitter employees that he’s fired with U.S. tech workers. The firings – about half the Twitter staff, or around 3,700 employees – are allegedly a cost-cutting measure. He summarily dismissed big earners like CEO Parag Agrawal, $30 million annually; Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, $18.9 million; Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, $17 million; and General Counsel Sean Edgett, whose salary is unknown, but likely in the same range as his peers. A class action lawsuit was filed against Twitter in San Francisco federal court claiming that the employees were not given the mandatory 60-day notice prior to the layoffs.
Many of the fired Twitter workers may be in the double-whammy vortex. As H-1B employees, unless they find another job within 60 days or successfully change their immigration status, they must leave the U.S. or risk deportation. H-1B holders who are legally required to leave must depart and not overstay their visas which the federal government clearly identifies as temporary. The U.S. Immigration and Immigration Services estimates that about 8 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, between 625 and 670, have H-1B visas.
Tech and social media are either laying off workers by the thousands or imposing hiring freezes. With Intel’s 20 percent slash, Snapchat’s 20 percent cut and hiring freezes at Amazon and Apple, H-1B holders are on edge. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, cut 11,000 jobs, 13 percent of its staff, after Mark Zuckerberg admitted that his so-called metaverse project was a $15 billion bomb. Meta/Facebook is in a tough spotvis-à-vis its H-1B layoffs. Per the Department of Labor classification, this means 15 percent or more of Meta’s full-time employees are H-1B nonimmigrant workers.
For more than 30 years, Silicon Valley and other employers have falsely claimed that without nonimmigrant H-1B visa employees, their businesses would suffer. Yet now, with widespread tech layoffs that include H-1B holders, admitting 85,000 international workers in 2023, the visa’s annual cap, would further hurt U.S. tech workers who are either displaced and forced to train their replacements or denied interviews. Because H-1B employees are cheaper to hire than U.S. tech graduates, the corporate elite prefer them over more skilled, more well-educated Americans.
The Wall Street Journal hosted a panel discussion that featured two advocates who favor expanding the H-1B program and one critic who urges major reforms. The advocates, David Bier, the Cato Institute’s immigration studies associate director, and Theresa Cardinal Brown, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s managing director of immigration and cross-border policy, argued that the H-1B visa cap should be increased and that their labor market presence makes America a more prosperous place.
The critic, Dr. Ron Hira, Howard University, political science associate professor and Economic Policy Institute research associate, countered that the rigged H-1B system is a transfer-of-wealth scam that makes the employers wealthy winners, and the workers, low-wage losers. Dr. Hira added that employers aren’t required to prove that a U.S. worker shortage exists before hiring an H-1B, that H-1B workers’ wages are set too low, and that the compliance system doesn’t hold employers accountable. “Guest-worker programs are supposed to fill domestic labor shortages. The H-1B program does not fill shortages,” Dr. Hira said.
The Journal debate represents the challenge that H-1B critics face. No matter how many H-1B visa holders lose their jobs, or how economically depressed the tech sector is, the demand for more visas will remain. Pro-immigration media supporters like the Journal, immigration advocacy groups, lawyers, corporate America and the powerful Chamber of Commerce will incessantly lobby Congress for more, more, more H-1B visas.
Ray Marshall, President Jimmy Carter’s Labor Secretary and University of Texas Professor Emeritus, gave a no-frills summary of the H-1B that its advocates should heed: “One of the best con jobs ever done on the American public and political systems…H-1B pays below market rate. If you’ve got H-1B workers, you don’t have to do training or pay good wages.” Musk has an opportunity to set an example for Meta and others to follow: hire U.S. tech workers.
Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Yes, you read that right. In a ballot question this past election day, Westtown residents voted 3,459 to 1,745 (67 percent) to approve a tax increase for the preservation of Crebilly Farms as one of Chesco’s major open spaces.
The earned income tax rate goes from 1 percent to 1.08 percent and the real estate tax rate increases from 3.5 mills to 3.92 mills.
Crebilly farms is the site of the Battle of Brandywine on Sept. 11, 1777, then the largest single-day battle of the American Revolution, which was won by the British/Hessian forces. This victory led to the British occupation of Philadelphia.
The estimated cost of the tax increase for a household earning $100,000 would be an additional $80 in local earned income tax. A household with an assessed house value of $250,000 would pay an additional $105 per year.
The Natural Lands Trust hopes to land about $2.5 million in grants, and says they are well on their way to doing that.
The Daily Local News of Chester County has been ovewhelmed with letters.
Record Immigration-Driven Population Surge In Canada
By Joe Guzzardi
Canada’s Immigration Minister Sean Fraser recently announced a bold immigration plan that has serious long-term deleterious consequences for the nation’s population growth and environmental degradation.
Fraser’s goal is, by 2025, to add 1.45 million permanent resident immigrants to address what he and other government officials claim is a critical labor shortage; allegedly 1 million Canadian jobs are unfilled. Fraser said: “Make no mistake. This is a massive increase in economic migration to Canada.” The Minister’s new plan projects a flood of new arrivals that will see 465,000 foreign nationals in 2023, rising to 500,000 in 2025. By comparison, 405,000 permanent residents were admitted last year.
Fraser’s immigration vision to admit a record-breaking number of immigrants is inspired by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sentiments. Following his 2019 election wherein he campaigned on more immigration, he followed up with welcoming messages to refugees. Defending his massive immigration increase, Fraser repeated familiar refrains about an aging Canadian population and a low birth rate. Without immigration, Fraser foresees a Canada that won’t have the financial resources to fund schools, hospitals and other services. In short, Fraser used scare tactics to deceive Canada’s citizens.
Canada’s long-standing commitment to higher immigration levels has created an unprecedented population surge. In 2021, Canada’s population rose to 37 million people, up 5.2 percent from 2016, driven mostly by immigration, according to official government data. Downtowns and distant suburbs of large cities have experienced the largest growth rates.
Canada added 1.8 million people between 2016 and 2021, with nearly 80 percent of those new residents arriving from across the globe. Research from Statistics Canada (StatsCan) published in its Census 2021 release gives Canada the dubious distinction of being the fastest growing G7 country. Almost 90 percent of new immigrants settled in urban centers, Statscan said, edging up the proportion of Canadians living in large urban centers to 73.7 percent from 73.2 percent five years ago. During the five-year time period studied, Toronto’s population increased 16.1 percent, Montreal, 24.2 percent, and Vancouver, 7.4 percent. The report concluded that Canada continues to urbanize as large city centers benefit most from new arrivals to the country. But not all Canadians would use “benefit” as a descriptor for rapid, uncontrolled population growth.
Fraser’s plan is so ill-conceived that even the most basic and fundamental need of arriving immigrants – affordable housing – will be an insurmountable challenge. Canada is undergoing a severe housing crisis that has driven home prices out of the range for many buyers. Simply put, more people mean that more homes and more roads that lead to them must be built. And new home development creates urban sprawl.
Mike Moffatt, executive director of the Smart Prosperity Institute, outlined the crisis that exploding population has wrought for environmentalists. “What [land] isn’t being used for housing is either being used for nature, like the Greenbelt, or for farmlands, – and we’re already losing 175 acres a day in Ontario of farmland to development.”
Ontario environmentalists like Moffatt are fighting to save its glorious Greenbelt from ever-greater development and sprawl. Today, plans to run a highway through a portion of the belt are advancing.
Like most environmentalists in Ontario, Moffatt fears that at any time the government could decide to develop “little pieces” of the Greenbelt. Sooner or later, Moffatt fears, those little pieces could add up to great big chunks.
To be crystal-clear, the new immigrant total will far exceed 1.45 million. New immigrants will grow their existing families and petition certain family members. Princeton University scholars estimated, conservatively, that each migrant petitions three relatives living abroad. Within a generation, the 1.45 million new Canadians could swell to more than 3 million.
Trudeau and Fraser have concocted an immigration plan that will devastate Canada. Immigration isn’t a one-off. Arriving immigrants need nurturing, a compassionate exercise that often comes at the expense, at least partially, of the native-born population. The Canadian government and the corporate elite are all-in on more immigrants. But, if the population at large knew that the arriving 1.45 million immigrants would more than double during many of their lifetimes and degrade Canada’s natural beauty, it would be staunchly opposed.
Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Record Immigration-Driven Population Surge In Canada
Veteran And Hero Cecil Travis Of The Washington Senators
By Joe Guzzardi
Baseball history is rich with inspiring stories about Hall of Fame players who served with distinction during World War II, then returned to the diamond, and picked up their stellar careers exactly where they left off. In 1942, Marine Corp Captain Ted Williams hit .356; came back in 1946 to hit .342, the first of his 13 consecutive .313 or better seasons. Williams’ 1946 accomplishments earned him the American League MVP award, and, in 1949, he won his second MVP. New York Yankees’ shortstop Phil Rizzuto, after two productive years, joined the Navy, and served in the Pacific Theater from 1943 to 1946. Once reunited with the Yankees, Rizzuto excelled, won the 1950 MVP title, and played on five All-Star teams.
But for another shortstop, his World War II experiences brought an end to what certainly would have been a Hall of Fame career. The Washington Senators’ Cecil Travis broke into baseball with a bang. In May 1931, after hitting .356 for the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts, the Washington Senators called Travis up. Travis got five consecutive hits in his first-ever game, quickly establishing himself as one of the American League’s most stellar players.
Playing shortstop and third base, Travis, age 18, compiled a .322 batting average in 1940, and his 1941 season, his ninth, was his best. Playing in all 152 games for the Senators, Travis batted .359, second only to Ted Williams’ incredible .406. Travis led the league with 218 hits and finished second with 19 triples. He also had a career-high 101 RBIs. Unfortunately, Travis, who hit .300 or better in eight of his first nine seasons, played for the perennial-losing Senators, a team that got little media attention. Otherwise, fans nationwide would have hailed Travis as a superstar.
A month after Pearl Harbor, the Army inducted Travis and sent him to Georgia’s Camp Wheeler. By 1944, Travis joined the 76th Infantry Division’s Special Forces and was shipped to Europe for active duty. The 76th entered the European Theater in December. That winter, during the Battle of the Bulge’s final days and in pursuit of Hitler’s retreating German soldiers, Americans suffered through bitter cold. Travis developed frostbite on two of his toes and spent time recovering in a French hospital.
After the 76th was deactivated in June 1945, Travis returned home, and by September, manager Ossie Bluege inserted his name into the Senators’ starting lineup. But Travis never returned to his pre-war excellence, and his potential Hall of Fame career came to a screeching halt. Travis wasn’t the same player who had compiled a .327 career batting average before the war. That September, he hit .241, and .252 in 1946, his last season as a full-time player.
On August 15, 1947 at Griffith Stadium, the Senators celebrated “Cecil Travis Night.” At the ceremony, which former Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower attended, Travis was showered with gifts, including a fancy DeSoto automobile and a 1,500-pound Hereford bull. Travis officially retired after the 1947 season – he hit .216 as a part-time player – and then until 1956, he scouted for the Senators.
Travis, like most World War II veterans, refused to blame his military service for derailing his baseball career. Instead, Travis simply said that his four years away from the game were “too long.” He said, “We had a job to do, an obligation, and we did it. I was hardly the only one.” Bob Feller and Williams lobbied unsuccessfully for Travis’ Hall of Fame induction, and pointed out that Travis’ .314 career average ranked him favorably with other Hall of Fame shortstops. But as Travis philosophically said: “I was a good player, but I wasn’t a great one.”
At age 93, on his farm in his native Georgia, Travis, the player that umpires once named their favorite – that Feller considered one of the toughest batters he faced and that Williams labeled as an efficient pure hitter – died from heart failure.
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.
Veteran And Hero Cecil Travis Of The Washington Senators
York and Lancaster counties are named for the warring sides in the English War of the Roses, even adopting their symbols with York having the white rose and Lancaster the red and naming sporting rivalries for it.
The incumbent in the 93rd is the Republican Mike Jones, with Chris Rodkey being the Democrat in the race.
“The most important person in my life is my grandmother, Margaret Cousler. She was elected in the 1960’s as the tax collector for Springgettsbury Township, where she served her community for over 45 years,”Ms. Cousler-Womack says on her Ballotpedia page, and that she wants to follow her “in being a voice for those who do not have one.”
“All of us, listening to each other and each playing our role, will be critical in our efforts to raise up our communities, from Dallastown to Shrewsbury and everything in between,”she says on her campaign website.
She has been a teacher’s assistant in the Dallastown area and a volunteer in various areas. She is also involved with Job’s Daughters International.
The organization was founded in 1920 as a companion group to the Masons and is a leadership organization for girls between the ages of 10 and 20.
The name comes from Job 42:15 “And in all the land were no women found so fair as the Daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren”, which was rare in those times.
David Kocur is the only other non-statewide candidate from the Keystone Party.
Green Party Faces Deceased Incumbent In 32 District House Race
By Bob Small
Green Party candidate Quenoia “Zarah” Livingston, a healthcare worker and community organizer, is running against a dead man in Pennsylvania’s 32 District State House race, which is in Allegheny County.
The 85-year-old incumbent Democrat Tony Deluca died Oct. 9 of lymphoma and the GOP didn’t field a candidate.
She says she would “ban fracking and retrain industry workers for equivalent green trades union jobs and protect our rights to alternative fuel sources, including solar”
Quenoia “Zarah” Livingston
She says she would guarantee housing.
She would seek to end a US-Israel law enforcement exchanges which she calls “deadly exchange.”
She wants to raise the minimum wage to $20.
She would earmark funds for fire and emergency services in rural areas.
She would legalize marijuana and magic mushrooms and back safe injection sites and needle exchanges.
If the late Mr. Deluca gets the most votes the seat will remain unfilled until a special election could be called.
Lastly, the only other non statewide candidate for the Pennsylvania Greens is Jay Ting Walker in the 23rd Legislative District. See his website for information.
Green Party Faces Deceased Incumbent In 32 District House Race
