The July Bureau of Labor Statistics report was a blockbuster. The economy created 528,000 jobs, and unemployment dipped to 3.5 percent, well ahead of Dow Jones’ 258,000 new jobs and 3.6 percent unemployment estimates. Wage growth also rose; average hourly earnings increased 0.5 percent for the month and 5.2 percent year-over-year, higher than, respectively, the .03 percent and 4.9 percent Wall Street estimates. A .05 percent increase, however, keeps consumers getting poorer as inflation last month proceeded at an 8.5 percent rate.
But no federal government report merits more skepticism than the monthly BLS. If the jobs market were truly booming, then the labor participation rate should be climbing. Instead, the participation rate is falling.
The number of Americans not in the labor force, those who neither have a job nor are seeking employment, climbed past the 100 million mark again in July, hitting 100,051,000, a 239,000 increase from June. From May to June, the previous 2022 reporting period, Americans detached from the labor force increased 510,000. The July report showed that labor participation was 62.1 percent.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that a lower labor force participation rate is associated with lower gross domestic product (GDP) and lower tax revenues, with larger federal outlays because people who are not in the labor force are more likely to enroll in certain federal benefit programs.
A deeper dig into the July statistics found that leisure and hospitality led the way in job gains with 96,000, although the industry is still 1.2 million workers shy of its pre-pandemic level. Professional and business services were second with 89,000. Health care added 70,000 positions, and government payrolls grew 57,000. Goods-producing industries also posted solid gains, with construction up 32,000, and manufacturing adding 30,000. Despite repeated alarm bells sounded by Walmart, Target and other big box stores that consumer demand is weak, retail jobs increased by 22,000.
Superficially, the job growth looks encouraging. But the wages that those jobs pay can’t support a household of four, or perhaps not even the individual worker. Leisure and hospitality workers, which BLS classifies as cooks, bartenders, waiters, hotel housekeepers and food preparation supervisors, earn an average of about $30,000. Professional and business services earn $40/hour; health care, $29,000; goods producing industries, $30,000, and retail workers, $29,000.
In order for blue-collar workers to advance into the middle-class lifestyle, they need the labor market to get tighter, a challenge since the border is open; temporary guest worker programs are expanding, and legal immigrants receive lifetime valid employment authorization. During the Biden administration, nearly 2.5 million border crossers have entered the U.S. Biden’s intention is to give most if not all parole status that includes work permission. Over the last 15 years, the State Department has issued millions of guest worker visas to foreign citizens who perform blue- and white-collar jobs. In fiscal 2022, the U.S. will accept 2.1 million lifetime work-authorized legal immigrants, a record number, that will swell the labor pool.
To help U.S. workers, the labor market should be tight. Fewer immigrants would push wages higher and move Americans up the economic ladder. People would become more productive and less welfare dependent.
When Congress returns after Labor Day, campaigning for the mid-term elections will begin in earnest. Most of the politicians will promise to elevate the electorate’s lifestyles. But few will mention the important role that reduced immigration would play in boosting wages.
July Labor Report Hides TruthJuly Labor Report Hides TruthJuly Labor Report Hides Truth
Despite Washington, D.C.’s August heat and humidity – perfect vacation weather – the nation’s capital is immersed in politics. A thorny two-part question consumes political insiders. The first part asks whether President Biden should run for re-election in 2024. And if the answer is no, the consensus response among nervous Democrats, the follow-up question is who’s the best candidate to replace him?
Apprehensive Democrats want Biden to step aside gracefully, but the president’s choice may be to go for a second term. Biden has repeatedly said that he’ll run because his party wants him to. Time will tell whether Democrats convert their cautiously anti-Biden rhetoric into action by launching primary challenges.
Since 1980, serious Republican and Democratic presidential challengers have failed – Ronald Reagan vs. Gerald Ford, Ted Kennedy vs. Jimmy Carter and Pat Buchanan vs. George H.W. Bush. The most important takeaway from the failed primary efforts is that incumbents Ford, Carter and Bush #41 lost their general elections. Unless Biden voluntarily retires, the only course left open to Democrats is to force him out, an ugly scene that would hurt the party.
Assuming that the party either puts Biden out to pasture or he bows out graciously, one way or another, his name won’t appear on the 2024 ballot. The second of the two questions will then move to the forefront: Who will replace him? As of today, the polls have identified California Gov. Gavin Newsom as the leading candidate with Michelle Obama a distant second. Predictably, Vice President Kamala Harris is nowhere. But before Democrats rush to embrace Newsom, they’d be well advised to vet him vis-à-vis the national electorate.
If voters are tired of privileged, elitist government, then the multimillionaire Newsom, who cavorts with billionaires, will have a hard time appealing to the working class. Billionaires were the major donors to Newsom’s gubernatorial campaigns. More important than Newsom’s donor base, however, are his politics. Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison should ask Newson for a preview of his campaign platform. For sure, Newsom’s stump speeches won’t include lines like this: “With your vote, I can convert America into 49 more California’s.”
Typically, candidates for high office point to their successes, and run on those accomplishments. In Newsom’s case, his feats fall into the negative column. For starters, California has the country’s lowest literacy rate. Only one in four Californians over age 15 can read and understand a simple sentence. Newsom’s open border’s advocacy contributes to sanctuary state California where 220 languages are spoken, and 44 percent of residents speak a language other than English at home. Seven million Californians cannot speak English well.
Math isn’t much better; about 40 percent of California’s public school students are proficient, but that pathetic ratio is explained away because math has been designated as racist, and its study is now based on critical race theory. Nothing is Golden about the state’s income and sales taxes; they rank with the nation’s highest.
Newsom ordered the first statewide COVID lockdown. Three protestors on a San Diego beach were arrested for violating Newsom’s stay-at-home edict. California is third in per capita homelessness behind Hawaii and New York. Median rent is $1,600 monthly, and homes sell for a median $538,500. Violent crime has spiked so high that the annual crime data’s publication is well overdue.
In fairness, though, Newsom’s candidacy would have, from the DNC’s perspective, an upside. Billionaires’ deep pocket donations and Silicon Valley’s censorship would be in play. Newsom would start out with 74 electoral votes in his back pocket, California, Oregon and Washington, and another 49 leaning his way, Illinois and New York. Conditions in Illinois and New York, however, are changing fast – so quickly that Biden is underwater in both states.
Weary from Newsom’s gubernatorial failures, Californians are fleeing the state, which should warn presidential voters that, if nominated, the slick, coiffed Hollywood darling is the wrong choice to replace Biden in the White House.
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.
Look At Newsom Before Leaping, DNCLook At Newsom Before Leaping, DNC
Statue Of Liberty Concerned Slavery, Not Immigration
By Kevin Lynn
Given the numerous attempts to pack immigration provisions into current spending bills, there’s probably no better time to talk about the real meaning of the Statue of Liberty.
The Statue of Liberty has long been a beacon for immigrants, and not just any immigrants, but the poorest and most destitute around the globe. This symbolism of taking in the world’s impoverished is embodied in a verse from Emma Lazarus’ poem, The New Colossus, which proclaims as though speaking through the statue itself, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!“
These often recited and famous words are a permanent fixture associated with the Statue of Liberty. After all, aren’t they inscribed on a bronze plaque below her feet? Yet, the bronze plaque wasn’t originally part of the statue; it was added 17 years after the dedication. And, what’s more, the poem’s words and ideas obscure the statue’s true meaning.
As Roy Beck author of Back of the Hiring Line points out, the statue was meant to “celebrate the fact that the U.S. had finally abolished slavery and accorded full liberty, at least in principle, to all its inhabitants.” What’s still ignored to this day, are the broken shackles on her feet, which signify the newfound liberty for formerly enslaved Black Americans.
The Statue of Liberty was not intended as a symbol for those who have yet to come, but a tribute to the foundational group of people who were already here. The intent was “to portray a form of government that could be copied by people in their own countries, not by leaving their countries.” Appropriately, she was named Liberty Enlightening the World, not Liberty Receiving Enthusiastically the World!
Immigration proponents’ understanding of the true meaning of the statute is entirely backward. They don’t talk about its history or intent as it goes against the heart of the open border advocates’ narrative. Much like the passage from “The New Colossus,” they focus on the poor coming from overseas and across our borders rather than the poor at home. The fact that there have been 1.6 million migrant encounters last fiscal year, and 1.6 million already, year to date is music to their ears.
Yet, more than three million immigrants a year, both legal and illegal, arriving in the U.S. creates colossal problems for everyone, and especially the poor. According to the Census Bureau, in 2020, the number of people officially in poverty was 37.2 million, and the depth of poverty has gotten worse. Deep poverty has increased to 45.6%.
And why do the poor continue to stay poor? One big reason is the oversupply of low-skilled immigrant workers, who depress wages of the native-born. Case in point, the bottom 20% of Americans’ income has remained largely the same ”and has only risen from around $15,000 to $16,100 between 1966 and 2014”. As a result, these lower-income households saw a twenty percent decrease between 1970 and 2020 in their income share compared to the middle and upper class.
Not surprisingly, the descendants of American slaves have been hit especially hard by the endless waves of migration. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that since 1970, actual earnings for the median black man have fallen from $30,800 to $21,000 in 2014, a 32 percent decline.
Declining wages have slowed people’s ability to move up financially in their lifetimes. This increasing economic inequality and the inability to get ahead is due, again, in large part to mass immigration.
Just look at the contrast between the upward trajectory of children born before the 1965 Immigration Act and afterwards. It’s startling! Whereas”92% of children born in 1940 earned higher incomes at the age of 30 than did their parents, this share dropped to 50% for children born in 1980“.
We’ve gone from a country where almost everyone could financially exceed their parents’ income to the odds of achieving that now are worse than flipping a coin. Of the children born into the bottom fifth of the economic ladder, 43% will continue to be stuck there, and for Americans born at the bottom, it’s clear the ability to move up is particularly low.
With the recent influx of immigrants, Democrat mayors in blue states finally must confront the consequences of their policies. New York City’s mayor Eric Adams recently let out a few known truths on immigration, conceding the illegal immigrant influx was a “real burden” and that for New Yorkers, “our schools are going to be impacted, our health care system is going to be impacted, our infrastructure is going to be impacted.” He went so far as to say, “if there was ever an all-hands-on-deck moment, this is it.” Hopefully, Mayor Adams will realize the costs of immigration before it sinks his ship.
In Washington D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser told Face the Nation that newly arrived asylum seekers were filling up homeless shelters. These bussed migrants are straining the city’s social safety net, and “the local taxpayers are not picking up the tab and should not pick up the tab.” She believes it’s the federal government’s responsibility and they should pull out their checkbook. She’s right on that. By the same token, it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the U.S. to generously accommodate illegal aliens, either.
The stone-faced Statue of Liberty and Americans struggling here share an uncomfortable truth: both the meaning of the statue and American livelihoods have been displaced. Prioritizing the needs of the impoverished from abroad over the plight of America’s most vulnerable ignores the fact that day after day the poor become more financially broke and economically immobile.
Reducing immigration will benefit those Americans struggling to make ends meet, as economic prosperity is very much possible. Between 1940-1980 when there was low immigration, “the real incomes of white males expanded two-and one-half fold” while “real incomes expanded four-fold” for Black men. By 1980, the Black middle class grew from 22 percent of African Americans to 71 percent.”
The U.S. has a duty and an obligation to pick up the tab for its citizens, not new arrivals from halfway around the world. It’s time we support our poor, our homeless, and our huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Only then can the U.S. live up to the real meaning of the Statue of Liberty.
Kevin Lynn is the Executive Director for Progressives for Immigration Reform. Lynn writes about the unintended consequences of unbridled immigration and their impacts on the environment, as well as federal, state and local politics. A former Army intelligence officer and successful organizer of influential groups in Arizona, California and Texas, he is based in Pennsylvania. Contact him at klynn@ firdc.org.
Statue Of Liberty Concerned Slavery, Not Immigration Statue Of Liberty Concerned Slavery, Not Immigration
Amendments Would Limit Abortion Funding, Extend Statute Of Limitation For Child Abusers, Other Things
By Bob Small
Recently the local Town Talk newspaper carried a full pager to inform citizens about the status of two proposed amendments to the Pennsylvania Constitution. We should explain that if these two resolutions are approved for a second time during the 2023-4 Legislative session, then they will graduate to ballot questions. The resolutions are 2021-2 and 2022-1. One might want to ask the various State Representative and State Senate Candidates for their stance on these issues in order to consider that for your decision on voting.
Resolution 2021-2 basically extends the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse by two years. Institutions which have a historic history of sheltering child abusers may try to sidetrack this bill.
Whether there should even be a statue of limitations in these cases, which if not murder, are a form of soul murder, is another question entirely.
There are four separate issues on Resolution 2022-1.
Firstly, “This constitution does not grant the right to taxpayer-funded abortion or any other right to abortion”. Obviously, this would be the most contentious issue of all those mentioned.
The second issue would be that the gubernatorial candidates who win the primary –assuming they mean the two major party candidates — will choose the lieutenant governor running mate. This would eliminate the current system, where the lieutenant governor candidates have their own primary. The current system has helped to generate many candidates with many voices.
The third issue is a discussion of voter ID for both in-person and mail-in ballots. The question of what qualifies as valid Voter ID would need to be clarified.
Lastly, and I’ll just quote here:
The General Assembly shall by statue provide for the auditing of elections and election results by the Auditor General. In years when the Auditor General stands for election to any office, an Independent Auditor shall conduct the audit.
Again, we would want our elected officials to “vote with their conscience” on these issues.
Amendments Would Limit Abortion Funding, Extend Statute Of Limitation For Child Abusers, Other Things
Jackie Robinson Museum Opening Sept. 5 In New York
By Joe Guzzardi
After a 14-year delay, the Jackie Robinson Museum will open to the public in New York on Sept. 5. For baseball fans, the 20,000 square foot museum at One Hudson Square Building, 75 Varick St. will offer interactive exhibits including one of Ebbets Field, 4,500 rare artifacts, and other displays that evoke Robinson’s baseball and civil rights activist experiences. The Jackie Robinson Foundation, founded in 1975 by Jackie’s wife Rachel, will oversee the museum.
Every year, Jackie’s heroic tale is told nationwide in classrooms, and he’s had schools, parkways, streets and apartment houses named in his honor. While Jackie’s story as Major League Baseball’s first black player is well known even to non-fans, Rachel’s biography is equally compelling and inspiring. Her life serves as a universal example for young women who want to succeed.
On July 19, 2022, Rachel Annetta Isum Robinson celebrated her 100th birthday; she was only 50 when Jackie died from a heart attack brought on by acute diabetes. Writing in the Society for American Baseball Research, journalist Ralph Carhart told of Rachel’s early upbringing in Los Angeles. Her mother Zellee took Rachel to violin lessons, museums and the Exposition Park Rose Garden. Rachel attended the acclaimed Manual Arts High School, which included among its notable alumni three-time Oscar winner Frank Capra and California Governor Goodwin Knight. Zellee and her husband Charles provided Rachel with opportunities that paved her way to accomplishment.
Rachel Robinson
Rachel enrolled in UCLA where she met Jackie. Sparks didn’t fly! Rachel thought the popular Bruins football star was “cocky, conceited and self-centered.” Eventually, however, Rachel’s opinion softened, and on their first formal date, Jack took her to the Bruins football homecoming dinner, an affair at the exclusive Biltmore Hotel. While Jack was serving in the U.S. Army, Rachel studied at the U.C. San Francisco School of Nursing, and worked eight-hour shifts in hospital wards. After graduating and earning the Florence Nightingale Award for excellence in nursing, Rachel and Jack married in Los Angeles in 1946, and the couple had Jackie, Jr. in November. Two other children followed, Sharon in 1950, and David in 1952.
Rachel later earned an M.S. degree in psychiatric nursing from New York University, became a Yale University Assistant Professor of nursing, a researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and directed the Connecticut Mental Health Center.
On April 15, 1947, Rachel was at Ebbets Field with Jackie, Jr., to watch her husband make history. Rachel later commented on how much Jack’s elevation from the Triple-A Montreal Royals to the Brooklyn Dodgers meant to “Black America, and how much we symbolized its hunger for opportunity and its determination to make dreams long deferred possible.”
After Jack died at age 52 in 1972, Rachel immediately took over as the protector of her husband’s legacy. Within weeks of his death, Rachel resigned from Yale and managed Jack’s various financial interests. One of Jackie’s dreams was to start a construction company that built affordable housing for underserved families. Although Rachel didn’t have adequate funding to pursue that project, she founded the Jack Robinson Development Corporation. Working with the Halpern Building Corporation, the JRDC built and managed more than 1,300 units of low- and moderate-income housing in New York City and Yonkers. Rachel supervised the property managers’ training.
Since the Jackie Robinson Foundation’s inception nearly half a century ago, Rachel has received 12 honorary doctorates, including one from her alma mater, New York University. Her first alma mater presented her with the UCLA Medal in 2009, the university’s highest honor. In 2017, Rachel was given the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, presented every three years to a person who enhances baseball’s positive image in society.
In 2020, Rachel and daughter Sharon moved to Delray Beach, Fla. where she’ll continue to provide a guiding hand to the museum curators and to promote Jackie’s legacy to all who visit, old fans and new.
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writer Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.
Jackie Robinson Museum Opening Sept. 5 In New York
Curt Weldon Addresses FBI Corruption; Bureau Is Being Undermined
By Curt Weldon
I never met Donald Trump but I do know our most trusted agencies are being undermined! Raiding anyone’s home is the ultimate attack on a persons reputation and character. It’s extremely difficult to reverse!
Let me share my personal story about a “raid”!
As a young teacher, my first vote went to Carter because Ford pardoned Nixon.
I served as assistant fire chief in 1975 at one of America’s largest disasters when two oil tankers collided at my hometown refinery in Marcus Hook, Pa. killing 29 and threatening our people.
I was elected mayor of Marcus Hook twice as candidate of both parties to defeat a major gang. I led local partnerships with the FBI/ATF.
My first legislation in the House held the Soviet’s accountable for violating the ABM Treaty. As vice chair of Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, I worked closely with Intel and was even hosted for a private breakfast by CIA Director Tenet offering full support.
As a member of the Cox Commission on China Technology Theft and Speakers Task Forces on Russia and North Korea, I worked with agency experts to strategize our security. I also witnessed, however, rogues and unscrupulous bastards only concerned with selfish interests.
I was leading three investigations that absolutely embarrassed the Intel rogues and bastards and White House leaders in both parties.
I dared publish a book in 2005 challenging these rogues. Next in line to chair Armed Services — which granted unlimited Subpoena Power — my 2006 election was deliberately maligned. Two weeks prior to the election, agents went to my child’s home where cameras and reporters were waiting. Headlines screamed scandal! To this day, NO ONE talked to my child – nor me! That same day agents were sent to the law offices of a Democrat friend who, at the time of the raid, was working for FBI Counter Intel that I HAD ARRANGED two years prior. Imagine, two sets of FBI Agents in the same office doing their jobs not aware that rogues and bastards had corrupted the process.
My friend received an apology days after the raid. We now know every detail of the abuse – we even found evidence that my opponent’s TV ads had been decreased for the week of the raids 6 weeks prior to the date of the raids.
At the request of my friend Dennis Kucinich, I briefed a top investigative journalist who agreed not to publish. After a four-month review with his Deep State sources, he verified every detail of what we now know.
It can shake the nation! Our agencies aren’t broken or corrupt but rogues and bastards manipulate the system, sometimes operating at will. They must be held fully accountable!
Many of my best friends in Congress were Democrats! In fact, after my 2006 defeat, my friends Biden, Hoyer and Pascrell called to tell me how sad they were at “what had been done to me”!
Our country is more polarized today than ever! People who do wrong – regardless of stature – must be held accountable. But our collective effort must focus on removing bad actors from the agencies that guarantee our freedom and independence!
Democracy is built on the principle that all power derives from the people and that they should rule. Our new technocratic elitists reject that principle. They believe that there are among us those who are somehow, smarter, more capable, and more enlightened. Call them the experts. We should simply concede power to them and do as we are told.
“Listen to the experts.”
The pretense is that this is rational and “fact-based.” It is not. It is almost a religion.
We were told for years that the “experts” knew best about how to deal with COVID-19. We were assured experimental vaccines would save us and render us immune to the disease. None of this was true. The vaccines don’t prevent you from getting the disease at all. On the contrary, the spread of COVID-19 now is almost exclusively among those who have been vaccinated, in some cases many times.
Nevermind. The “experts” somehow remain infallible. Also, you should definitely not pay any attention to the mounting evidence of medical complications from the vaccines – blood clots, heart problems, and the like. You are not qualified to judge.
The same phenomenon can be seen in regard to elections and mail-in voting. After literally centuries of reliance on in-person voting, we scrapped that system and placed our faith in a brand-new system virtually devoid of security procedures or mechanisms for confirming the validity of ballots received in the mail. The system is riddled with weaknesses and holes you could drive a Mack Truck through.
Point these out, however, and you are a ‘conspiracy theorist’. You are a mad man. The “experts” have assured us the system is foolproof. Only an idiot would presume to question our new high priests.
In the real world, at ground level, the gap between this fantasy of infallibility and what is really happening in our electoral system could not be starker. Consider some notes from a recent meeting of the Luzerne County election board in Pennsylvania. This is from a single meeting, in a single one of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.
The chair of the election board, a Democrat, admitted out loud during the meeting that tampering with ballots placed in drop boxes in the county is and has been a serious issue. He noted that the boxes are so insecure “ballots can be removed by sticking your hand in and getting ones close to the edge out, or by pulling out ballots that are sticking out of the top of the drop box from too many in the box.’“
Ballots are being dumped into unsecured boxes on the street. They are sitting there unattended until picked up. Access to the ballots is not controlled in any meaningful fashion. Yet, we are required to assume that they are valid and pretend that the legally required chain of custody for ballots is intact.
Also discussed at this meeting was a new proposal to allow ballots to be mailed to a P.O. box at a post office. After being received, the ballots would be stored “behind the counter” or “somewhere” until collected by “building and grounds crew, or some other staff” for sorting. There will be no security of any kind for the ballots received. There will be no effort to control access. Again, we will simply be required to pretend that there is anything remotely resembling the legally required chain of custody in place.
At this same meeting, the chairman also recognized that recently 67 voter registrations had been mishandled but characterized that as “not a bad number” and dismissed any suggestion that this was a serious problem. It remains unclear precisely what was meant by “mishandled.”
In the same county, citizens pointing out problems with the accuracy of the data in the voter rolls have been told that their complaints will not be considered. The county’s official position has been that only the family of a person who is deceased or has moved out of state can inform the authorities of the necessity for a change to the rolls. Just for good measure, the county has added that any effort by an average citizen to bring such an issue to the attention of the authorities will be considered an act of “voter suppression.”
In fact, none of that is true. Under Pennsylvania law, any qualified elector (a voter) can make a challenge to the Secretary of State of the Commonwealth by filling out a challenge affidavit, to challenge a voter’s status. This means that in Luzerne County the authorities have been actively working to guarantee that the voter rolls remain inaccurate and continue to contain the names of the deceased and those who no longer live in the jurisdiction.
One county. One meeting. These are snippets.
Pennsylvania’s election system is broken. Third-world nations do a better job of guaranteeing the integrity of the ballot box than the Commonwealth does.
Where is the legislature? When will the people’s elected representatives act to clean up this mess?
Charles S. (Sam) Faddis heads UnitePa. He is a former US Army officer and retired CIA operations officer, who took the first CIA team into Iraq in 2002, almost a year in advance of the invasion of that country. He is the author of several books. This article originally appeared on his Substack account.
Mail-In Voting Devoid Of Security Mail-In Voting Devoid Of Security
In Washington, D.C., when taxpayers foot the bill, disregard for mounting costs is the norm. Nowhere is that axiom truer than when applied to the border crisis that’s allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter, and then resettle throughout the United States. Overstretched, inflation-embattled taxpayers, who have no voice in the invasion, nevertheless pay for its every step.
The latest: the Department of Homeland Security has deployed federal air marshals to personally escort border crossers and illegal aliens from the U.S./Mexico border processing facilities to Border Patrol agents’ custody before they’re released into the interior. Once released, which happens almost immediately, the aliens receive parole, an immigration status that historically is granted on a case-by-case basis, and to satisfy a humanitarian need or to provide a significant public necessity. President Biden has indiscriminately authorized parole, and the work permission that accompanies it, for thousands of aliens.
Biden has rolled out the red carpet for illegal aliens whose resettled total since his inauguration is estimated at 1.35 million. Not only do the migrants, who learned of Biden’s largesse months ago, demand parole, DHS is considering giving them Immigration Customs and Enforcement-issued identification cards, officially known as the Secure Docket Card, and has permitted 1,000 unlawfully present migrants to use deportation orders as well as civil arrest warrants to board commercial domestic flights. The Transportation Security Administration confirmed that warrants and deportation orders are valid IDs for illegal immigrants.
Moreover, U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) learned that, before boarding, DHS gives the migrants a packet that includes flight information, Customs and Border Protection Notices to Appear, a list of pro bono legal service providers, maps of major U.S. cities and information on how to obtain legal assistance in Spanish. The packet also explains to the migrants how to enroll their children in school when they reach their destination.
Gooden wondered about the secrecy behind the massive organization required to carry out an invasion the magnitude of the one playing out at the Southwest Border. Other questions that concern Gooden and are shared by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pertain to vetting, accountability, safety and funding.
Last year, DeSantis’ office said that more than 70 “unannounced” flights into Jacksonville arrived with “no notice,” and therefore he had no ability to block the flights. As a result, a passenger on one of the unannounced flights was a 24-year-old Honduran national who told Border Patrol he was a 17-year-old unaccompanied minor. The Honduran, Yery Noel Medina Ulloa, was arrested and charged with murder last month in Jacksonville for the brutal stabbing death of a Florida man who had taken him in as a tenant. The victim, Francisco Javier Cuellar, 46, was father to four children. Biden’s border policy is to admit migrants who either are or claim to be unaccompanied minors.
Here are a few takeaways: first, the border crisis represents an unprecedented, historic assault on sovereign America. Voters are voiceless on Biden’s immigration agenda. If Biden-style open borders with work authorization for the unlawfully present were to appear on a ballot, it would be overwhelmingly defeated. Only the elite benefit from mass immigration. Second, millions of taxpayer dollars fund open borders and its consequences. Education, medical care and housing are on the taxpayers’ dime.
Third, unless the GOP captures Congress in the mid-term election, and makes good on its promise to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the border invasion and the got-aways will continue at a record-breaking pace until Biden is out of office. By that time, assuming 1.35 million illegal immigrants annually, with about 500,000 got-aways arriving per year too, about 7.4 million aliens will have come criminally to the U.S. with Biden’s blessing.
In a partial win for enforcement advocates and constitutionalists, last month the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana ruled that the Biden administration has to follow the federal laws put in place by Congress which state that all immigrants who commit certain crimes must be detained and removed. The Biden administration sought to develop its own criminal hierarchy for removal. Compared to the huge numbers surging the border, the victory is small potatoes, especially in light of Biden and Mayorkas’ disregard for long-standing immigration laws. Only the foolhardy would believe that Biden and his team would respect the 5th Circuit Court when they’ve spent 18 months breaking established laws.
I’m not sure where to start, as much of the following is interconnected: Middlebury College, Charles Murray, Scott Norman Rosenthal, the First Amendment, The Bell Curve, and pro-Palestinian poetry.
Scott Norman Rosenthal is an expatriate Philadelphian now living in Vermont. (“Expatriate” sounds better than “exiled”). We’ve been friends for 40 years. A disability rights activist, Scott’s pro-Palestinian poetry has gotten him attacked on the streets of Philadelphia and accused of being “a self-hating Jew”.
This is one of the dozen or so e-mailed articles he has been writing and sending me on an almost daily basis. In it, he regrets his participation in the March 2, 2017, attack on Charles Murray at Middlebury College to prevent Murray from speaking. (Regretting what he has done is not something Scott does often.)
Charles Murry at Middlebury College in 2017
“Simply labeling what you criticize as hate speech doesn’t give an excuse to violently suppress dissenting voices.”
Though I was familiar with The Bell Curve, I knew very little about Charles Murray. An easier read than The Bell Curve is “Thomas Jefferson Goes East” in the National Review.
Here are some other opinions on the 2017 Middlebury incident. (It should be pointed out that Murrary spoke there in other years without any violent incidents.)
My feeling is that we should never prevent speech, no matter how much we disagree with the speaker and his or her ideas. Rather, we should attend the talk and challenge the speaker during the Question-and-Answer portion of the event. Charles Murray is a rather complicated individual whose conclusions are sometimes correct (i.e., that the welfare state does not eliminate poverty), but whose solutions — well, that’s where we part company.
I was going to shoehorn into this article more information on Charles Murray and his relationship with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), but realized that that is too broad a topic. So I will discuss it in a future post.
[Note: Rogue elections changed the rules in the 2020 elections without proper authorization in state law. Bureaucrats adopted drop boxes, mail-in voting, and other vectors of election fraud, citing the pandemic as justification. Dems seek to make those infirmities permanent. That’s legislatures must be more actively involved in elections.]
*The SCOTUS agreed to hear Moore v. Harper, a case in which some North Carolina legislators have asked the Court to embrace the independent state legislature notion.
*First, the notion would greenlight partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts. *Second, the radical claim would remove constraints on voter suppression.
*Third, the notion would create election chaos, disenfranchising voters and overwhelming election officials.
*Fourth, the idea would remove critical checks against election interference & sabotage.
The mailing describes leveraging high schools and colleges to recruit student poll workers. It also describes a left-wing group – Power the Polls – that “can provide support for recruitment in general, and targeting specific needs such as tech savvy individuals, multilingual speakers, or any other specific skills or gaps you are seeking to fill. When election administrators flag a poll worker need, Power the Polls can boost recruitment through their various recruitment channels – partners, businesses, earned media, social media (and more)….” The ideas list stresses bilingual populations, underrepresented communities, teachers unions, and government employees – all of which lean Democrat.
[Note: this is not good news for election integrity. The potential for election fraud through mail-in voting is well-recognized (e.g., Carter-Baker commission). And don’t forget all the problems with biased postal workers and their union reported during the 2020 elections, several of which are recounted in the article.]
* With mail-in ballots becoming a feature of all future elections, the United States government, specifically the United States Postal Service (USPS) is now creating a permanent division inside USPS to control the delivery and return of the election ballots.
* “In this cycle, there may not be a way to reprint ballots late in the game,” said Matthew Weil of the Bipartisan Policy Center, which recently published a report on the paper shortage. That risks “chaos,” he said, in jurisdictions where a judge might strike a candidate from a ballot as the election draws close.
* The group typically hands out voter registration forms at high school graduations and naturalization ceremonies around the state. In places like Harris County — home to Houston and a population of 4.7 million — the league received 6,000 fewer forms than it requested. “We weren’t able to provide them to everyone” at naturalization ceremonies.
*The League of Women Voters printed 10,000 forms in Harris County alone.
Dems Go Into Overdrive to Discredit Election Integrity Efforts
1) New state laws re Zuckerbucks, drop boxes, voter, ID, new investigative units and powers, absentee ballot restrictions are all based on election fraud myths.
[Note: No, they’re all based on the bad stuff that happened during the 2020 elections, all of which has been copiously documented for anyone who cares to look at the evidence.]
2) Election deniers are running for administrative positions in several states
4) GOP poll workers are saboteurs and violent Scrutineers mailing – 7/26/22
* The same people who pushed The Big Lie about the 2020 election are threatening to disrupt the midterms.
*(A training teaches) Advance planning to keep yourself and others safe. [Note: Telling members that outsiders are not to be trusted and a threat is a cult technique. Also, the way we hear the story, Senator Schumer has been itching to have a hearing on this but can’t seem to find any victims of Republican poll watchers to testify.]
5) Michigan Sheriff who brought a complaint against state officials for interfering with his investigation is a far-right kook.
AVA Press Release on Electoral Count Act Draft. Here is the AVA press release with some great quotes from Phill Kline regarding our position on the Senate’s draft language of the Electoral Count Act. We should not shift the power to regulate and approve elections away from the state legislators and to an unchecked executive branch official.
3.) American Confidence in Elections Act. Republicans are introducing a federal bill to regulate elections, while still reserving some power for the states. I have included the “one-pager” as well as the actual bill text. I am curious to hear your thoughts.
4.) Court win in New Mexico! Voteref.com is publishing voter records across the country to assist the public in being informed of how clean the voter rolls are. New Mexico election officials filed against the group in federal court seeking to prevent the public from knowing who was on New Mexico’s voter rolls. True to form, New Mexico Dem Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse referred the matter to the Attorney General’s office for possible prosecution of the organization. In my limited experience, it is normally individuals who are criminally prosecuted and not organizations. However, with an exception for victims of domestic abuse, voter registrations will be allowed to be published.
5.) Michigan Election Petition. I am attaching the petition language from “Promote the Vote” submitted to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office, to be placed onto the November ballot. I understand a conservative ballot petition was also submitted to the SOS’s office last week. I understand that the conservative petition is seeking to become a state statute, whereas the Promote the Vote language is seeking to become a Constitutional Amendment. =
6.) Misinformation. A group called the “Scrutineers” offered a Zoom training yesterday where they spread misinformation about voters on the right. Here is the agenda:
“The same people who pushed The Big Lie about the 2020 election are threatening to disrupt the midterms. We anticipate that they’ll show up both to try to stop people from voting and — in the days following the election — to try to stop the vote counting. While many groups are organizing to protect voters at the polls, few are paying attention to the dangers of disruptions in election offices after the election. If you plan to be an observer after the election, you may be feeling concerned about your safety. That’s why Scrutineers’ AFTER Project (Act for Trusted Elections) is holding a special training next weekend. We hope you’ll participate!
This two-hour training is a supplement to the introductory training for vote count observers, How to Help Stop Election Sabotage. If you’re at all concerned that people may show up to cause trouble where you’ll be observing, this training was made for you.
You’ll learn:
o Why your help observing the vote count is critical right now
o Tips and techniques to bring your best self into any heated situation
o Advance planning to keep yourself and others safe
*
We are excited at how patriots across the state are taking up the issue of election integrity with their local officials! Amanda Prettyman described her work with her county Board of Elections and successfully secured their vote for a hand-count of the GOP Primary’s Secretary of State race in 3 precincts in Bibb County. Marcia Cox updated us on the upcoming vote for a hand count in Cherokee and called for a show of support at the Cherokee County Board of Elections Meeting on August 1st at 9:30 a.m. at 1130 Bluffs Parkway in Canton. We were also informed of a 2nd call for supporters on Tuesday night’s Cherokee County Board of Commissioners meeting at 6:00 p.m. at the same location in support of eliminating the use of voting machines there. Kimberly Hoechstetter updated us on the struggles surrounding the petition to unseal the ballots to perform a hand count of the 2022 Primary Election in Pickens County. Sarah Thomas shared with us this template and instructions she authored for all of us to lawfully request to unseal our ballots in our counties.
Angie Allison informed us of an initiative by The America Project designed by Election Specialists to determine the level of transparency in each of Georgia’s 159 counties.
This past week has been a whirlwind of activity! Garland Favorito shared with us details of his marriage last week to Tamara Seymour. He updated us on the Savannah Election Integrity Initiative Thursday and on VoterGA’s litigation efforts.
Dr. Sklaroff is a resident of Montgomery County and practices oncology and hematology in Philadelphia.
