Category: Guest Authors

Don Zimmer Married At Home Plate

By Joe Guzzardi

During Don Zimmer’s 66-year career in professional baseball, the scrappy infielder shook Babe Ruth’s hand, posed for pictures with Clark Gable and Lana Turner, played with Brooklyn Dodgers’ Hall of Famers Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, played as a New York Mets for Casey Stengel, managed the Boston Red Sox when Carlton Fisk hit his 1975 12^th inning World Series home run to defeat the Cincinnati Reds, and coached the 1978 New York Yankees when Bucky Dent broke bean towners’ hearts his with game winning, American League East clinching four-bagger. Zimmer played and managed winter baseball in Japan, Cuba and Puerto Rico where he managed Roberto Clemente and Willie Mays. In all, Zimmer played for six major league teams, managed four and coached 11. Except for a single Social Security check he cashed between gigs, Zimmer never earned a penny outside of baseball.

But despite Zimmer’s Hollywood experiences and his baseball achievements – he was a two-time All-Star and a six-time World Series champion – he was most proud of his 1951 home plate marriage to Carol Jean Bauerle before a night game in Elmira, New York, where, as a top Brooklyn Dodgers’ prospect, he had worked his way up to the Class A Pioneers. Zimmer and Carol Jean, nicknamed “Soot” by her German grandmother, had been sweethearts since the 10^th grade at Cincinnati’s Western Hills High School when the couple were on a girl-asks-boy hayride. A star quarterback, the basketball team’s starting guard and shortstop on the Ohio state championship baseball nine, Zimmer was the state’s most widely recognized high school athlete. As Soot recalled the hayride, “We were 16, and were together from then on.”

Soot attended and documented every Opening Day for each of the teams that her husband played in, managed or coached during Zimmer’s 66 years in baseball. In 2015, about 18 months after Zimmer’s death, Tampa Bay Times reporter Lane DeGregory visited Soot at her Seminole, Fla., condo where she shared the contents of more than 70 scrapbooks and photo albums she had lovingly compiled.

Soot’s cabinets were filled with “Zim” bobbleheads and baseballs that Ronald Reagan, Robert Redford, Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson had signed. Also, the shelves contained the scrapbooks Soot meticulously stacked in chronological order. With loving dedication, Soot collected everything printed about Don, including team bios, photos, stories, programs and baseball cards, and tiny print box scores. She cut out each entry, underlined Zim’s name with a blue pen, and then gently pasted the clipping into the pages of her scrapbooks.

In her senior year, Soot went to the local dime store, bought a scrapbook, and the cardboard corners used long-ago to secure pictures in place. The first scrapbook was conceived, intended as a gift to her boyfriend, and compiled evenings after she completed her homework assignments. Soot subscribed to every Ohio newspaper whose city had a ball park. Outside of Ohio, Soot asked friends to mail her newspapers. As Zim’s baseball skills improved, stories about him started appearing in more widely distributed newspapers, eventually landing him on the front page of The New York Times. Soot’s albums had clippings from more than 10,500 games played in hundreds of ballparks.

From 2004 to 2014, Zimmer worked for the Tampa Rays as a senior advisor, his last baseball job. On Opening Day 2014, Zimmer, wearing number 66 to honor his years spent in professional baseball, rode across the diamond in a golf cart, too weak to walk. Fans gave him a standing ovation. Two months before their 63^rd anniversary, Zimmer died from heart and kidney failure. But Soot had one more event to chronicle. A Rays’ representative called to tell Soot that the team would honor Zim on Opening Day 2015, hang his jersey from the Tropicana Field rafters and retire number 66. Then age 84, Soot had a few empty pages in one of her volumes to add the latest Zim stories. “Good thing there’s still room in here,” Soot joked, “Too old to start a new scrapbook.” Soot, now 92, treasures her memories of life with Zim, on and off the field.

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

Don Zimmer Married At Home Plate

Population Growth Would Slow With Low Immigration

By Joe Guzzardi

The United States Forest Service (USFS), a Department of Agriculture agency that administers the nation’s 154 forests and manages 194 million acres of land, released an analysis which estimated that, every day, the nation loses 6 million acres of open space. USFS defines open space as publicly or privately owned, protected or unprotected areas that include forests, grasslands, farms, ranches, streams, rivers and parks. The 6 million acres lost to development at what USFS called “an alarming rate” hampers a functioning ecosystem, agriculture, forest health and recreational pleasures.

Although the USFS developed its “Forests on the Edge” program to emphasize preserving open space, no educational campaign can keep up with U.S. population growth and the urban sprawl that it generates. A NumbersUSA study, “Vanishing Open Spaces, Population Growth and Sprawl in America,” analyzed the projected long-term decline in per capita farmland. Using the projected cropland losses based on 1982-2010 data, and U.S. Census Bureau population estimates, the study found as follows: available cropland will have declined from 1.9 acres per person in 1982 to 0.3 acre per person in 2100, an 84 percent cropland loss decrease. After two centuries of nonstop development, little of the remaining acreage would be in pristine condition.

Assuming the Census Bureau 2050 and 2100 population projections prove accurate, population of 404 million and 571 million, respectively, and available cropland per person declines to a corresponding 0.7 and 0.3 acre per person, government officials should be gravely concerned. Available food production will be drastically slashed – too many mouths to feed and not enough farmland to produce the food. 

Selling farmland to developers is lucrative and often too good a deal for farmers to decline. Farming is a tough, often uncertain business. Crops can be hit with blight; bad weather can impact yield, and crop prices may decline. The land is more valuable to developers than to the farmer-owner. Farmland might be worth $10,000 or $20,000 per acre, but as residential or commercial land, rezoned, it might be valued at $100,000 or more per acre.

The core issue is the federal government’s inability – some say refusal – to adopt sustainable population policies. The Census Bureau has identified immigration and births to immigrants as the population growth’s primary driver. In February 2020, the Census Bureau published “A Changing Nation: Population Projections Under Alternative Immigration Scenarios.” It showed that between 2020 and 2060 different legal immigration levels – zero, low and high – could change the population in those years by as much as 127 million people, with estimates ranging anywhere from 330 million to a high of 447 million total U.S. residents. 

In the zero-immigration scenario that also accounts for out-emigration, natural increases – births minus deaths – are the only way population can increase. Negative natural increases will, in the zero-immigration scenario, create a shrinking population with annual declines starting in 2035 and continuing at an accelerated pace through 2060.

The Census Bureau is the ultimate Washington, D.C. nonpartisan agency. Many wonder, then, why the Biden administration, and the many Republican and Democratic administrations that preceded the current one, have ignored, or merely paid lip service to, the population conclusions. The Census Bureau acknowledges that its zero immigration calculations are hypothetical, but low immigration, generally considered about 500,000 or about half the current admission level, would be an overdue step in the right direction. Under the high immigration estimate, the 2060 population will increase 124 million to 447 million. The 5 million-plus ongoing border surge, which grows numerically every day, is excluded from the Census Bureau’s data, but if included would increase the 2060 population increase well beyond the 124 million.

Even if legal immigration is reduced to the Census Bureau’s low-level, the U.S. will still remain the world’s most welcoming nation, open to refugees, asylees and others. At the same time, reduced immigration will help protect the natural resources that make the U.S. the preferred destination of immigrants.

Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Project 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  dot com.

Population Growth Would Slow With Low Immigration

Amnesty Is Not Border Crisis Solution Despite Biden Claim

By Joe Guzzardi

Leading up to President Biden’s State of the Union speech, reporters speculated about how much time, if any, he would give to the Southwest border crisis. The answer is now known. From his one hour, 12 minutes, and 40 seconds-long speech – the eighth-longest SOU address of the last 60 years, and exceeded only by President Bill Clinton, four times, and President Donald Trump, three times, Biden spent about 60 seconds on his open border debacle. Some analysts said that the brief one-minute reference proved that Biden is indifferent to America’s eroded sovereignty that the border chaos created. Others claimed that the border mess is too embarrassing for Biden to acknowledge, and the less he said, the better for him, and his fellow Democrats.

At about the one-hour mark, Biden launched his foray into immigration. Biden shouted out: “America’s border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts.” He then spoke more specifically about the direction in which he wants Congress to act. “If we don’t pass my comprehensive immigration reform, at least pass my plan to provide the equipment and officers to secure the border and a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, those on temporary status, farm workers, [and] essential workers.”

Biden followed the well-traveled path that immigration expansionists have long trekked. Whatever problem society might face, the solution today, yesterday, and always is comprehensive immigration reform that includes citizenship. But granting amnesty to an unknown total of illegal immigrants already residing in the U.S. has no relationship to the sovereign-busting open border. Amnesty doesn’t equate to a secure border. More to the point, no one on Capitol Hill knows the precise illegal immigrant total living within the interior. Estimates range from 12 million to 30 million. Illegal aliens have to be unlucky to get deported under Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 72,177 illegal immigrants in FY 2022, slightly more than the 59,011 deported in FY 2021. That number in turn marked a sharp drop from the 185,884 deported in FY 20, and 267,258 in FY 2019.

Biden may want to dismiss the border, or he may be satisfied that his welcome-the-world policy is correct. But the reality is that under Mayorkas, border agents have processed and release more than five million aliens into the interior. Another million or so migrants, called gotaways, have slipped past agents, and are roaming among the general population. No one is certain of their identities, their intentions or their current whereabout. No one is looking for them either, and if they’re located, ICE cannot, as per a Mayorkas memo, deport them. Mayorkas does not have the constitutional authority to rewrite settled immigration laws, but in the Biden administration, legality in immigration law is inconsequential. The only thing Biden and Mayorkas know about immigration laws is that they refuse to enforce them.

The illegal alien border surge will cost U.S. taxpayers $100 billion, and counting. The $100 billion is the open border’s dollar cost. But the human cost, disregarded by Biden and Mayorkas is tragic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote that over 150 people die every day from overdoses related to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Drug cartels have taken advantage of the open border to traffic fentanyl, and have built a multi-billion business around their deadly drug.

In his Spanish-language rebuttal, Mexico-born U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.) said: “In my home county in Southern Arizona, fentanyl overdoses are the number one cause of death among young people — outpacing car crashes.”

A post-SOTU good news, bad news summary: amnesty has no chance to pass in the 118th Congress, but the nation will have to endure another two years of the lawless Biden administration, and its determination to destroy historic America.

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.

Amnesty Is Not Border Crisis Solution Despite Biden Claim

CBO Population Projection Off-Mark Regarding Illegals

By Joe Guzzardi

In January, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its projection for U.S. population growth from 2023 until 2053. CBO anticipates a huge hike from today’s 336 million U.S. residents to 373 million three-decades out, a 37-million-person surge.

Over the next decade, immigration will represent about three-quarters of the overall population increase, and the greater number of births than deaths will account for the remaining one-quarter. After 2033, population growth will be increasingly driven by net immigration, which beginning in 2042 will account for all population growth.

CBO released its report without fanfare, perhaps because it included, buried deep on page five, this sentence: “Net immigration of foreign-born people without legal status” (my emphasis) – a wokeism meaning illegal aliens – into the U.S. is projected to average 220,000 a year over the next decade, a remarkable 175 percent bump from the 80,000 average the CBO had forecast a mere six months ago.

Although the CBO identifies as objective, critics question how its analysis could arrive at the modest 220,000 annual illegal alien projection, a completely detached conclusion from the Southwest border reality. In December 2022 alone, the Department of Homeland Security announced that CBP had more than 300,000 migrant encounters. And since President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, an estimated 5.5 million migrants from at least 160 nations have unlawfully crossed into the U.S.

The administration’s goal is to grant parole, and the work authorization that parole status includes, to as many illegal immigrants as possible. The consequences for citizens seeking entry-level employment, especially minorities and the working poor, will be devastating. Using even the low CBO estimate of 220,000 illegal immigrants annually means a significantly expanded labor pool. When using the year-to-date total since Biden’s inauguration of 5.5 million arrivals, more than the combined populations of Chicago and Houston, and the aggregate available workers, mainly unskilled or low-skilled, the labor market bloats dramatically.

The inarguable labor supply and demand fact applies. And because the nation will have an in-take of millions of aliens instead of hundreds of thousands that occurred with previous administrations, the newly arrived illegal immigrants will compete for employment not only with U.S. workers, but also with each other – a dream come true for profit-driven corporate America.

The supply and demand truism exists at all economic levels. In New York City’s subway system, next to the arriving/departing train platforms, Ecuadorians and Hondurans are, without a mandatory city general vendor’s license, selling M&Ms and Skittles for $2. But one level above, a vendor who’s done everything correctly, including paying his licensing fee, loses life-sustaining revenue, pays less in city and state taxes, and may eventually go out of business. Everyone loses including the migrants who sell candy in New York’s dangerous underground.

Annual illegal immigration totals are twice those of legal immigration. In 2021 and 2022, and referring back to the 5.5 illegal entrants, about 1.25 illegal immigrants on average crossed each year contrasted to about 1 million legal immigrants.

U.S. workers deserve a break. Not only does the federal government issue more than 1 million annual permanent residency green cards that include lifetime valid work permission, the State Department approves another 1 million guest worker visas, some without numerical ceiling, and without risk that the government might intervene to assure that employers comply with the regulations.

Employers have a bottomless supply of foreign-born workers to hire. Evidence: At the end of 2022, 29.6 million legal and illegal immigrants were employed, 1.9 million more than during the pre-pandemic years. Meanwhile, the Labor Force Participation rate for Americans continues to decline. As long as Biden continues his reckless and wanton policy of welcoming the world, then workers’ best friend – a tight labor market – won’t exist

Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined The Project 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.

CBO Population Projection Off-Mark Regarding Illegals

PFIR Becoming Institute For Sound Public Policy — Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR) announced its name change to the Institute for Sound Public Policy (IfSPP), Feb. 34.  The new name signals the organization’s broader vision and expanded mission to advocate for national policies that prioritize the security and well-being of U.S. citizens in a world where roughly 5 billion people live on less than $10 per day.

“2023 marks a sea change. Our repositioning as the Institute for Sound Public Policy will enable us to reach out and earn the moral and financial support of those who feel the pressures of the global billions.” said Kevin Lynn, executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy. 

“For the past 15 years Progressives for Immigration Reform has identified numerous ways in which the inadequacy and abuse of immigration policy has destroyed livelihoods and diminished the overall quality of life in the U.S.  Today as the Institute for Sound Public Policy we expand beyond the adverse effects of unbridled human capital to address other essential factors and the root cause crippling our nation: globalist policies and neoliberal ideologies that pursue the unrestricted flow of capital, goods, and people.”

Progressives for Immigration Reform will immediately brand itself as the Institute for Sound Public Policy with a new logo, and a new website to be announced mid-March 2023.

It’s existing entities, U.S. Tech Workers, Doctors without Jobs, and Our Carbon Footprint will now operate under The Project for Immigration Reform, a  supporting organization to the Institute for Sound Public Policy.  The entities will continue to bring attention to the abuse of U.S. employment visa programs, the inequities in the U.S.’ medical residency matching program, and the impact of immigration-fueled population growth on the environment. 

During the name change process, the organization’s legal name will remain Progressives for Immigration Reform.