Category: Guest Authors

Musk Wrong on Population

Musk Wrong on Population

By Joe Guzzardi

For number crunchers, July’s second week offered eyepopping data. To begin with, the consumer price index shot up to 9.1 percent year-over-year, the highest spike in four decades. Truth be told, consumers may be taking a bigger than 9.1 percent hit. The CPI is a controversial index which many economists insist is manipulated to reflect fewer alarming price increases and, conversely, a stronger GDP. Taken together, those two variables, massaged favorably, help to keep a lid on investor panic, and to underpay on cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.

Since time immemorial, CPI was calculated based on a fixed market basket of goods. But in the 1990s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics introduced what it identified as geometric weighing – substituting lower-priced, lower-quality goods in the basket, while excluding more expensive, but still everyday items.

Most blue-collar, working Americans consider the CPI a government gimmick that purposely excludes their day-to-day necessities: energy, up 41.6 percent; gas, + 60 percent, eggs +33 percent; and public transportation, +23.7. A truer indicator of consumer pain showed up in the producer wholesale price index which hit 11.3 percent.

Inflation, which makes Americans poorer with each passing day, has an immediate and tangible effect on consumers’ psyches. But another report issued in early July is, taken over the long-term, more disturbing.

Inflation has its peaks and valleys, but the prediction by the United Nations that the global population will reach 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050 represents an ongoing, and perhaps insurmountable, challenge. By the end of the century, the U.N. estimates that there will be 10.4 billion people on the planet. Today, the world’s population is just a tick under 8 billion, and has grown at an unsustainable rate.

Not until around 1800 did the world’s population first reach 1 billion. But, only 130 years later in 1930, the second billion was reached, and the third billion in 1960, another 30 years later. Then, global population exploded. The fourth billion arrived 15 years later in 1974, and the fifth billion only 13 years after that. During the 20th century alone, the world’s population grew from 1.65 billion to 6 billion. For comparison, in 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now. Every year, about 83 million people are added to the global population.

Eight nations will account for most of the growth between now and 2050: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania. India is expected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country as soon as next year.

Musk Wrong on Population

Those countries are thousands of miles away, and their difficulties unfathomable to most Americans, but U.S. population also is climbing at an unsustainable rate. The nation’s population is about 332 million now, but will reach 424 million in 2100, about 25 percent more people than live in the U.S. today. The consequences of too many people are grave, both in terms of more difficult human interaction in overcrowded surroundings, and lasting ecological damage to dwindling natural resources.

Ironically, the U.N. released its frightening population projections at about the same time that Elon Musk, claiming the U.S. faces an “underpopulation crisis,” pleaded for an increase in births. “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” said Musk, who cited himself as a would-be role model. One of his love interests, Shivon Zilis, gave birth to twins this summer, bringing Musk’s total offspring to nine. To Musk, replacement level fertility, normally considered 2.1 children per woman, is an outdated notion.

Unfortunately, Musk’s message to promote a have-more-children agenda, via his huge social media following, reaches more people than the communications of stabilization advocates. Don’t listen to Musk! Census Bureau data reflects a net gain of one person – births and international migrant arrivals minus deaths – in the U.S. every 26 seconds, far too many to protect the nation’s already crumbling, overcrowded infrastructure and its imperiled ecosystems.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Find more at joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Musk Wrong on Population Musk Wrong on Population

All-Star Game Few Saw and Fewer Remember

All-Star Game Few Saw and Fewer Remember

By Joe Guzzardi

In 1963, an All-Star game was played that few fans watched, and 59 years later, nobody remembers. The game, comprised exclusively of Latino players from the American and National Leagues, took place at the New York Giants’ historic Polo Grounds – the last game played at Coogan’s Bluff. The exhibition game, played before 14,235 fans, was a charity event to benefit a new Latin American Hall of Fame.

The Polo Grounds, temporary home to the New York Mets during their first two seasons, 1962 and 1963, had showcased some of baseball’s greatest players – 373-game winning pitcher Christie Mathewson, right fielder Mel Ott who came up as a rookie at age 17 and retired, still a Giants, 22 years and 511 home runs later, and Willie Mays, the “Say Hey Kid.” Baseball’s most dramatic moment, Bobby Thompson’s 1951 “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” thrilled Polo Grounds’ bugs.

All-Star Game Few Saw and Fewer Remember

Nearly six decades ago, on that warm and sunny October 13th day, a week after the Los Angeles Dodgers swept the New York Yankees in the World Series, the lineups were filled with Latin American and Caribbean nations’ players – Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Panama and Mexico. Black or multiracial, they endured the same bigotry as African Americans.

Among them were future Hall of Famers Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Clemente and Luis Aparicio. Others honored included a Minnesota Twins’ future three-time batting champion Tony Oliva, and his teammates MVP Zoilo Versalles and Vic Power, San Francisco Giants star outfielder and future manager Felipe Alou, the Washington Senators’ Minnie Minoso and the New York Yankees’ Hector Lopez, coming off his fourth straight World Series appearance. Unlike the 2022 All-Star Game, the Latinos played their game in obscurity – no television, no media hoopla and no promotional advertisement. Three of Latin music’s biggest talents, however, performed on field before the game – bandleaders Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez and Cuban bombshell singer La Lupe.

For the Latin stars, the game was emotionally charged. Marichal, the “Dominican Dandy,” remembered: “There was a lot of emotion among all the players, and you could tell the fans were excited about it, too.” Manny Mota, a Dominican and Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder then in his second major league season, stressed how proud the players were to represent their countries – “prestige and pride” were his words.

For all its historical importance, the game was a snoozer with the NL, who had won the official 1963 All-Star Game in Cleveland 5-3, pulled away by the ninth inning, 5-0. Alou, Mota, the St. Louis Cardinals’ shortstop Julian Javier, and the Pirates’ Alvin O’Neal McBean contributed the winning RBIs. Alou’s single came off the Twin’s losing pitcher, the Cuban Pedro Ramos.

Giants ace Marichal, a 25-game winner in 1963, hurled four innings of shutout ball, allowing just two hits, no walks and fanning six. But the win went to McBean who followed Marichal to the mound with four shutout innings of his own. After the game, the players lined up in the clubhouse to collect their $175 stipend, a far cry from what today’s ASG participants receive. While not paid in folding green, the 2022 All-Stars get six free tickets to the game and to the Home Run Derby, free first-class airfare and hotel, the daily $117.50 MLB meal stipend, and a swag bag. Don’t forget that the crème de la crème ASG players have negotiated into their contract’s bonuses for up to $500,000 just for being chosen.

But at least three of the Latin players had the last laugh. Cepeda, Clemente and Power were such unfamiliar faces that after getting paid the first time, they went to the back of the line, and unrecognized, collected a second time. Said Cepeda, “The guy never realized he paid us twice.”

This year’s game is 7:30 tonight and will be broadcast on Fox.

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

All-Star Game Few Saw and Fewer Remember

China Closer To World Domination With U.S. Help

China Closer To World Domination With U.S. Help

By Joe Guzzardi

The announcement that a Chinese company purchased about 300 acres of prime North Dakota property is the latest in an ongoing landgrab by one of America’s biggest threats. Historically, Chinese nationals are one of the largest purchasers of U.S. residential property, with an average of between 20,000 and 40,000 transactions annually.

On Capitol Hill, legislators worry that the Shandong, China-based real estate acquisition could create espionage opportunities with the Defense Department as its target. The property is close to the Grand Forks Air Force Base that houses sensitive drone technology. The base is also the home of a new space networking center that is the backbone of all U.S. military global communications. The Fufeng Group, which paid $2.6 million to three North Dakotans, produces flavor enhancers and sugar substitutes.

Despite the economic opportunities that the project represents – 200 jobs for locals and ancillary benefits to the community – the Republican and Democratic Senators are strongly opposed. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said he’s suspicious of the Chinese government’s intent. Cramer noted that the U.S. “grossly” underestimates how effective the People’s Republic of China is at collecting information and using it in nefarious ways. “And so,” Cramer continued, “I’d just as soon not have the Chinese Communist Party doing business in my backyard.”

China Moves Closer To World Domination With U.S. Help

In a rare demonstration of true bipartisanship, both the Senate Intelligence Committee chair and the Republican ranking member told the media that they oppose the CCP putting down roots in rural North Dakota.

Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) said that his committee has been “loudly sounding the alarm” about China’s counterintelligence threat and its investments at sites close to military bases.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) agreed, calling it “foolish, dangerous and shortsighted” to allow the CCP to acquire land near military bases. Rubio reminded reporters that he’s cosponsoring legislation, the “Protecting Military Installation and Ranges Act of 2021,” that would give the Biden administration the power to block such CCP purchases.

If Warner, Rubio and others who sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee have heightened awareness of the danger the CCP poses to the U.S. interior, they’re unfashionably late to the dance. The reality is that Chinese national spies are everywhere, including U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) bed, and, for 20 years, driving U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, then Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, around San Francisco. Journalists wrote that the Bay Area is a hotbed for Russian and Chinese espionage. As proof of Congress’ indifference to China’s infiltration, Swalwell kept his seat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Feinstein remains on the Senate Intelligence Committee. No one knows what secrets Fang Fang learned during her pillow talk with Swalwell or what Feinstein’s unidentified driver, never charged with a crime, may have overheard.

The Swalwell and Feinstein cases are high profile. But a closer look confirms that thousands of Chinese nationals, possibly well-intentioned, but perhaps with dubious intentions, are in the U.S. at the federal government’s invitation. Chinese student enrollment, according to an overview of international enrollment at U.S. universities, “far exceeds” that of other foreign nations. Although the COVID-19 pandemic created a 72 percent decline in international enrollment, 382,561 Chinese students attended the most prestigious U.S. universities during 2020-2021. Aggregate international enrollment hit a pre-pandemic high of 1.1 million in 2017-2018.

International students arrive on F-1 visas for general coursework, M-1 visas for vocational programs, or J-1 visas for cultural exchange students. A large number of Chinese nationals return home after completing their academic course work. No one, however, knows what proprietary information the students may be taking back with them. Some who stay take advantage of the fraud-ridden Optional Practical Training Program that displaces qualified U.S. graduates. International high-skill employment has increased sharply in recent years.

The White House and Congress are strangely indifferent to the obvious risks like property theft that a significant Chinese presence in U.S. universities and employment in high-tech fields create. China makes no secret of its goal to become the world’s dominant superpower. As long as the federal government extends such a helpful hand in so many critical ways – education and white-collar employment – China will easily reach its objective.

China Closer To World Domination

Pam Geller Reports And Philly Happenings

Pam Geller Reports And Philly Happenings

By Dr. Robert Sklaroff

Philly and Pennsylvania often mirrors national forces and, thus, this “homer” has aggregated on-point cites, many of which are from the Inqy [when it suppresses bias]. For example, Brittany Salerno and Barbara Capozzi provided a pro/con debate on whether safe injection sites are desirable; I went to Penn State with Barbara, who is a South Philly real estate agent whose Dem-$-raiser I once attended (She’s color-blind, literally and figuratively). Fortunately, she took the “correct” side, opposing government-given drugs.

Other Philly-evolutions have been captured, reflecting lotsa stuff impacting urban USA:

Inga Saffron: By turning Fairmount Water Works into a party space, Philly exemplifies the worst of park privatization

As they rip up worn trolley tracks on South 40th Street, SEPTA construction crews have been excavating pieces of Philadelphia history

Few buildings from the 1876 Centennial in Fairmount Park are still standing

A new plan for the Navy Yard would add residential, commercial, and retail space to ‘create a new community’

Owner of Melrose & Broad Street Diners obtained demolition permits

Police Seek Gang of Black Children in Beating Death of Elderly Black Man

‘Queer-owned’ leftist Philly cafe shut down by woke employees for not being left-wing enough

A western Pennsylvania lawmaker wanted to hold up Penn State’s budget funding unless it comes clean about where it’s storing the statue of former football coach Joe Paterno.

The PA Department of State filed suit against three Commonwealth county boards of elections (Berks, Fayette and Lancaster = “outlier counties”) for not properly certifying vote tallies from the May 17 primary election; they “are holding up final certification of PA’s 2022 primary election because they refuse to send the Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth (Leigh Chapman) certified returns that include every ballot lawfully cast in that election. This Court should order the three county boards that are delaying resolution of the 2022 primary election to send to the Acting Secretary certifications reflecting all lawfully cast ballots.” They are “to submit a single set of results that include[s] mail-in votes that arrived in undated external envelopes.” Those ballots have been the subject of several other lawsuits.” 

Pa. lawmakers agreed to a big election funding deal — with strings attached — as election proposals swirled during budget season. But the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette warned new PA Election Rules Will Make Things Worse. The state’s new budget calls for $45 million to help counties run their elections, including roughly $4.75 million for Allegheny County. But the rules of the “election integrity grant program” that counties must accept to receive the money are ineffective and counterproductive. 

Generally, the journalistic input of Pamela Geller is integrated within the memos but, here, it’s desirable to dramatize the uniqueness of one day’s output:

DoJ EXTORTING Testimonies Out of Their Witnesses

Daughter Delivers Elderly Mother with Cancer to Prison on Jan 6 Charges, “Scared to Death. I’m Frightened”

Almost a THIRD of Americans believe they’ll need to take up arms against the government, 68% of rural voters say the government is ‘corrupt and rigged against everyday people like me’

The Democrat Regime is Rewriting The History of the mRNA Vaccines

FDA Grants EMERGENCY Authorization for Another COVID-19 Vaccine

Trump SOS Mike Pompeo; Mr. President, your weakness is making the Middle East more dangerous

California School Punishes First Grader for Saying Any Life Matters

Mexican Cartel Drug Traffickers Released On Bail-Reform Laws After Feds Arrest Them In New York City With $1.2 Million Of Meth

Biden In Israel: “Honor of the Holocaust”

Biden says US would use military force against Iran as a ‘last resort’ to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon

Muttering and Lost: Disoriented Biden – “What Am I Doing Now?”

Massive Numbers Crossing Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas

Left-Wing Group Lands $171 MiIllion Gov’t Contract That Could Reach $1 Billion To Help Illegal Immigrants Avoid Deportation

More of Hunter Biden’s sick, depraved life comes to light

‘Palestinian’ terror group and Iranian state TV channel back mapping project against Jews, pro-Israel Christian groups in America

TRUMP PEACE. Saudi Magazine Praises Arab Israelis Who Serve in IDF

Democrats Unanimously REJECTED Amendment to Increase Penalties For All Child Sex Trafficking offenses

President of the Islamic Cultural Center: “All of Europe – inshallah – will be Muslim. So, have children!”

Soros-Backed LA DA Gascon Kills ‘Lifer Unit,’ Will No Longer Let Victims Know When Their Assaulters Are up for Parole

UNRWA inciting violence with U.S. funding

Dr. Sklaroff is a resident of Montgomery County and practices oncology and hematology in Philadelphia.

Pam Geller Reports And Philly Happenings Pam Geller Reports And Philly Happenings
Pam Geller Reports And Philly Happenings

Congress Tries to Slip Immigration Into Must-Pass Defense Bill

Congress Tries to Slip Immigration Into Must-Pass Defense Bill

By Joe Guzzardi

With a final vote soon to come on the must-pass fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), expansionists have filed a slew of immigration amendments unrelated to national security.

Backdoor immigration amendments that have no ties to defense spending are an annual distraction practiced by Republicans and Democrats alike. Time is running out for immigration advocates to get their pet legislation passed. The August recess is at hand, and after Congress returns, mid-term election campaigning will begin in earnest, which will minimize the chance of passing controversial immigration bills.

This year, two immigration amendments are front and center. The first is Rep. Deborah K. Ross’ (D-N.C.) that would grant amnesty to who she referred to as “documented Dreamers,” an estimated 200,000 young people who grew up in the U.S. as dependents on their parents’ employment visas. When DREAMers turn 21, they’re at risk for deportation. While Ross’ amendment has bipartisan support, and is said to be under Senate consideration, it hasn’t advanced in either chamber.

Ross’ proposal, if enacted, would send a message to smugglers and coyotes that Congress’ priority isn’t enforcement but to create more economic incentives for migrants and their families to risk their lives with dangerous border crossings. Congress’ urgency for deferred action for childhood arrivals must be to protect future young migrants from falling into the same immigration limbo status that has, for years, bedeviled current DREAMers. Such a plan would include mandatory E-Verify to eliminate the jobs magnet that lures illegal immigrants. Family-based chain migration should end. Adults shouldn’t be encouraged to use their minor children as anchors to keep them in the U.S. Since the White House has ceded operational control of the border to criminal cartels, strict enforcement laws are required to protect future migrants.

A second untimely and harmful amendment is Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-Calif.) proposal to remove the numerical caps from certain science, technology, engineering and math degree holders (STEM) in national-security related fields. Lofgren, an immigration lawyer, chairs the House Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee. If Lofgren’s amendment is included in the 2023 NDAA, high-skilled immigrants would more quickly become lawful permanent residents and the labor force would expand significantly. A larger labor pool creates a more challenging employment market for U.S. tech workers with STEM degrees, including recent university graduates, to obtain the white-collar jobs they’re qualified to hold.

Congress Tries to Slip Immigration Into Must-Pass Defense Bill

Ross and Lofgren’s wished-for amendments read as if they were drawn up by the donor-based elite and immigration lawyers, both categories of which would profit immensely if the proposals became law. With 54 million working-age (16-64) Americans neither working nor looking for work, and millions more who are underemployed workers – they hold part-time jobs, but want full-time employment – proposed immigration laws should benefit them, and not foreign-born nationals. The most adversely affected when immigration expands are those without a college diploma, most often blacks, Latinos and women, but also white males.

Increasing immigration is the dominant talking point in the roiling immigration reform debate and has reached the point where advocates maneuver to include amendments in a must-pass defense bill. Few in Congress, and no one participating in the NDAA hearings, speaks on behalf of the millions of Americans whose jobs and livelihoods increased legal immigration threatens. Scholars from the University of California, San Diego and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond found that the H-1B visa led to an Indian tech boom – in India! At the same time, U.S. tech workers at Disney, Southern California Edison, Met Life, Wal-Mart and myriad corporations have been displaced by mostly Indian H-1B visa workers.

Immigration doesn’t belong in the NDAA. Advocates like Ross, Lofgren and others can introduce stand-alone bills to advance their agendas, not slip amendments into must-pass legislation. Congress should always protect Americans from an overage of legal, employment-based visa workers, but especially during this period of open borders and high domestic unemployment.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Read more at joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Congress Tries to Slip Immigration into Must-Pass Defense Bill

Dealing With Bathroom Bills

Dealing With Bathroom Bills

By Bob Small

Let us start by agreeing that transexuals, whether female-to-male or male-to-female, remain human beings and should retain the rights of all human beings. Not a radical concept, one would think.

However, all human beings, as children say many times “need to go bathroom”. Here is where the controversy begins, both here and internationally.  The British and other controversies  be covered later.

According to 34 Pa Code section 41.21: “The entrances of all retiring rooms for women shall be clearly marked. Men are not permitted to use or frequent a retiring room assigned to women …

This seems fairly clear-cut, except for this question: where does a male-to-female transexual fit in, especially one who is pre-op?

Dealing With Bathroom Bills

Well, we now have PA Senate Bill 613 and PA House Bill 613, which, it is to be hoped, will clear this up.  While they don’t specifically use the term “bathroom”, both of these bills discuss “facilities” and “privilege”. The term “facilities” has been interpreted elsewhere to include restrooms; indeed, what else would it mean?

This information comes from PAfamily.org, which opposes men at any stage of transition entering women’s’ rest rooms.

It has occurred to me that I might be standing next to a female-to-male in the next stall, but I wouldn’t expect any problem, nor would I even know.

At any rate, this situation never seems to be addressed, probably because there’s not a power imbalance between men and other men.

Another observer to whom I was referred said, “The point is, these men were able to gain access to these spaces because of the idea that a man becomes a woman the instant he says, “I’m a woman”.

Regarding male-to-female transexuals, another viewpoint states that “We want the exact same thing that most of the other women want”. I urge you to read this article.

The following quotes are from people whom I know well, who want to remain anonymous, so fiery is the topic:

From a Springfield conservative on HB 300:

“Its proponents want to assign protections enjoyed by people with immutable characteristics (such as race, color, sex, national origin, handicap, or disability) to people with changeable behaviors and mental states”.

This seemed to be the best summation I ever heard of the conservative view.

A transexual friend now living in Vermont merely asks me to imagine having to avoid using bathrooms in public, due to fear of choosing the “wrong” one.

I just have to find one marked “men”. My life is simple by comparison.

Dealing With Bathroom Bills

Jarett Coleman Flew To Upset Win Over Pat Browne In 16th District

Jarett Coleman Flew To Upset Win Over Pat Browne In 16th District

By Bob Small

Jarett Coleman, a professional pilot, was flying high in his upset GOP primary victory over long-term Lehigh County State Senator Pat Browne of the 16th District. The most recent count, as of June 3, was 17,041 to 17,022.

The 16th Senatorial District consists of Allentown and along with Alburtis, Coopersburg, Heidelberg Township, Lower Macungie Township, Lower Milford Township, Lowhill Township, Lynn Township, Macungie, North Whitehall Township, Slatington, South Whitehall Township, Upper Macungie Township, Upper Milford Township, Upper Saucon Township, Washington Township, Weisenberg Township,

Pat Browne served almost three decades in the Pennsylvania House and Senate. At the time of this election, he was the Pennsylvania Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman, a post he had held since 2014. Having spent a decade in the State House representing the 131st District, he was elected to the State Senate in 2005.

Jarett Coleman Flew To Upset Win Over Pat Browne In 16th District
Jarrett Coleman

Among Browne’s accomplishments was his role as the founding Chairman of the Arts and Culture Caucus and the author of laws encouraging businesses to hire citizens with disabilities. 

Jarrett Coleman serves on the Parkland School Board where he works against CRT (Critical Race Theory) and mask mandates, and for greater transparency by the schools to parents in terms of the school curriculum.

During the campaign, Coleman pledged that he would decline pension and perks, support term limits, and oppose tax hikes. It will be interesting to follow his progress regarding these pledges.

He lives in Breinigsville with his wife, two children and three dogs.

After nearly three decades serving as a Lehigh Valley lawmaker, State Senator Pat Browne has a short answer when asked, “What’s next?” 

“I have no idea,” he said in an interview with WLVR.

Jarett Coleman Flew To Upset Win Over Pat Browne In 16th District

Amnesty No Laughing Matter for Cornyn

Amnesty No Laughing Matter for Cornyn

By Joe Guzzardi

No sooner had Texas Sen. John Cornyn finished taking bows for delivering the 15 Republican votes to pass the bipartisan gun safety bill, 65-33, than he began talking up amnesty.

Cornyn, a Judiciary Committee member, was overheard promoting amnesty with fellow senators and immigration advocates Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). Cornyn to Padilla: “First guns, now immigration,” meaning amnesty. Very quickly, however, Cornyn backed off, calling his comment a “joke.” Attempting to cover his tracks, Cornyn said, “The Democrats and their allies in the media really can’t take a joke.”

Nevertheless, the take-away among the GOP is if Cornyn was so quick to cave on the Second Amendment, and to deliver a major legislative victory for the opposition Democrats, more tent-folding, perhaps on amnesty, may not be far away. Because of the pride he took at cooperating with Democrats, at the Texas GOP convention, Cornyn was roundly booed.

Skeptics wonder about Cornyn’s immigration and amnesty credibility. Raising doubts regarding Cornyn’s duplicity and providing validity to his amnesty remark is his chummy relationship with Padilla, the former California Secretary of State who Gov. Gavin Newsom named to replace Kamala Harris as U.S. senator. The son of a cook and a house cleaner who migrated to the U.S. from Mexico, Padilla, immediately appointed as chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee, is an avowed immigration expansionist who pledged to work on behalf of aliens to obtain citizenship. Padilla’s self-admitted mission is to make immigration reform “as bold as we can make it.”

Amnesty No Laughing Matter for Cornyn

The Padilla-Cornyn coziness includes having worked together successfully on a bill which will speed up the admission process by which Afghan interpreters and translators who allegedly assisted U.S. troops can enter the U.S. The odd couple also joined up to write a transportation bill seeking to use relief funds for natural disaster cleanup on roads, trails, bridges and transit systems. For true immigration enforcement advocates, Padilla should represent the enemy.

If Cornyn studied immigration history, he’d know that official amnesties, passed by Congress and signed by the sitting president, only encourage more illegal immigration. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Actgranted amnesty to about 2.7 million unlawfully present aliens, and promised to resolve a wide range of immigration problems like hiring aliens, and resolving the ag labor shortages. Today, 36 years later, about 15.5 million illegal immigrants reside in the U.S., one million of them arrived during Biden’s first year in office, and immigration-related issues are more vexing than in 1986. IRCA was a colossal failure, yet amnesty is always a primary congressional goal.

Unless Cornyn is living in a vacuum, he must know that under Biden, amnesty is constantly ongoing although through executive fiat. Thousands of migrants released into the interior have received parole, an immigration benefit that allows aliens to secure work permits. Biden has abused parole – normally issued on a temporary basis to individuals to assist in cases of urgent, humanitarian need. Under Biden, Temporary Protected Status protections have been granted to or extended for  Afghans,  Burmese,  Cameroonians,  Haitians, Somalis, South Sudanese, Ukrainians, Venezuelans and Yemenis. In the aggregate, the TPS population under Biden increased by several hundred thousand foreign nationals. All will receive work permits, and few will ever return home.

At a minimum, whether he was joking or not, Cornyn’s reference to amnesty demonstrated extremely poor judgment. Open borders and illegal immigration have spun out of control under the Democratic White House and Congress. Because of open borders, fentanyl and human trafficking have reached epic proportions, and Americans are deeply concerned about the nation’s future, and overwhelmingly oppose amnesty.

Cornyn’s next re-election bid comes in 2026, enough time for him to wise up to what his constituents’ priorities are. To Texans, many of whose counties declared the border crisis an invasion, amnesty is no joking matter.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration and its consequences. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org. Read more at joeguzzardi@substack.com.

Amnesty No Laughing Matter for Cornyn

Secure Border And Save Lives

Secure Border And Save Lives

By Joe Guzzardi

San Antonio officials last week reported the deaths of 53 migrants, a total that includes 40 men and 13 women. The senseless deaths are an international tragedy that plays out year after year. Migrant deaths near the border are common as people attempt to cross rugged terrain without adequate water, food or clothing. Before Monday, the worst smuggling-related mass fatality in recent Texas history was in 2003, when 19 people died after being trapped in an unrefrigerated dairy truck for hundreds of miles. The International Organization for Migration calculated that at least 650 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021.

In the latest heartbreaking incident, the migrants were trapped in a tractor-trailer; 46 were dead at the scene, and another five expired from heat exhaustion and dehydration, gruesome ways to die, at local hospitals. Five children were among the dead that included 22 Mexicans, seven Guatemalans and two Hondurans. Officials are working to identify the nationalities of the other victims.

The list of parties responsible for these needless deaths is long, and includes at its top the United States President, Joe Biden. Texas Governor Gregg Abbott tweeted, “These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also was highly critical of the Biden administration. Obrador placed the culpability on the U.S. border and interior failures which, he said, encourage trafficking. But Biden was quick to deflect blame. He called Abbott’s remarks “shameful” grandstanding, while he denounced “exploiting vulnerable individuals for profit.” Incredulously, the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said after the incident that “the border is closed.”

Secure Border And Save Lives

Biden has company on the most culpable list. Among them are Vice President Kamala Harris who has steadfastly refused to travel to the border even though the president specifically gave her that responsibility, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. On social media, Mayorkas promised that he’ll “take action to disrupt smuggling networks.” But Mayorkas’ inaction on border security is the very reason smugglers have thrived under his period as DHS secretary that has seen more than 1 million aliens, exclusive of got-aways, released into the interior.

The only smattering of good news is that four perpetrators, including Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao and Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendez, are in federal custody. Documents filed on June 28 confirmed that police went to a San Antonio address listed on the tractor-trailer’s registration and stopped a Ford pickup truck that was leaving the property. Police arrested both D’Lunas and charged them with illegal possession of multiple firearms. Both are Mexican citizens in the country illegally after overstaying their tourist visas. Visa overstays are another failure of the government. Department of Homeland Security statistics indicate that in 2020, there were 684,500 visa overstays, up about 1 percent from 2019.

The U.S. border with Mexico has essentially been open, albeit to different degrees, for decades. When the White House and Congress get serious about securing America’s Southwest border, and enforcing the immigration laws that provide citizens with a safe interior, then the smuggling business will slowly die out. The most humane, most life-saving border policy is one that rigorously secures the border.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration and its consequences. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org. Find more at joeguzzardi@substack.com.

Secure Border And Save Lives

John Philip Sousa Baseball Ace, Happy 4th Of July

John Philip Sousa Baseball Ace, Happy 4th Of July

By Joe Guzzardi

In the mid-19th century, John Philip Sousa was one of America’s biggest “base ball” bugs, as fans were then called. In his autobiography, “Marching Along,” Sousa, born in 1854, described the joy baseball had imparted to him since way back to the Civil War. Abner Doubleday, the sport’s mythical inventor, was a Union general in the war who fought at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

Throughout the war, when soldiers on either side weren’t marching or engaged in battle, they played “base ball” to break up camp life’s monotony. Commanders and army doctors encouraged “base ball” believing that it kept the soldiers fit, healthy and out of trouble. While soldiers frequently took part in foot races, wrestling and boxing matches, and occasionally even cricket or football, “base ball” was the most popular of all competitive sports in both army camps. Historians noted that baseball came of age during the Civil War, and entered mainstream American culture during those years. Note: in 1884, The New York Times style guide changed base ball to baseball, and it has been written that way ever since.

As a Washington, D.C. youth, Sousa watched the game evolve from its earliest days through the Dead Ball era that showcased baseball’s first inductees: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner. Starting in 1857, the 21-run endpoint was eliminated, with games instead ending after nine innings. Foreshadowing modern-day baseball, other rule changes were introduced, including called strikes — previously, strikes were only the result of missed swings. Also, cricket-style flat bats were banned, and a white line marked the boundary between fair and foul territory; the umpire no longer had to guess where the ball landed.

Sousa was more than a fan. Through his years as a bandmaster, Sousa often pitched in games which pitted his band members against local nines. Eventually, his band grew large enough so that intra-squad games between the brass and woodwind sections were played. Whenever the opportunity arose to promote the band in front of a large audience, Sousa, often called “The American March King,” would pitch an inning or two. His band members referred to Sousa as “Ace,” and he pitched until age 62.

John Philip Sousa Baseball Ace, Happy 4th Of July

In the February 1909 issue of “Baseball Magazine,” Sousa, in his essay titled “The Greatest Game in the World,” wrote effusively about playing the American Guards on Independence Day, 1900 at the Paris, France, Exposition Universelle, the World’s Fair. “What,” asked Sousa, “could have been more appropriate for two American organizations in a foreign land to do [play baseball] on the glorious Fourth?” The All-American game that Sousa loved was one of the first baseball games played in Europe.

At the behest of Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and to celebrate the National League’s 50th anniversary, Sousa in 1925 wrote “The National Game” that combined his two greatest passions, baseball and marches. The original performances featured four baseball bat solos.

As rousing as “The National Game” march is, Sousa’s classic, “Stars and Stripes Forever,” is more uplifting. Written in 1896, and congressionally approved as the nation’s official march in 1987, Sousa’s lyrics have inspired patriotism in generations of Americans:

“Red and white and starry blue

Is freedom’s shield and home.

“Other nations may deem their flags the best
And cheer them with fervid elation

“But the flag of the North and South and West
Is the flag of flags, the flag of Freedom’s nation.

“Hurrah for the flag of the free!
May it wave as our standard forever,
The gem of the land and the sea,
The banner of the right.”

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

John Philip Sousa Baseball Ace, Happy 4th Of July