Bert Shepard Was A One-Legged WWII Hero who Pitched for Washington Senators
By Joe Guzzardi
Between August 1 and August 5, 1945, the Washington Senators played five consecutive double headers. In a normal season, a scheduling burden of that magnitude wouldn’t have mattered much to the lowly Senators. But in 1945, the “first in love, first in war, and last in the American League” Senators were in a neck-and-neck pennant race with the Detroit Tigers.
The Senators won nine of the 10 double header games, losing the August 4 night cap 15-4 to the Boston Red Sox. Motivated by the lopsided score, and unwilling to stretch his exhausted pitching staff further, Senators’ manager Ossie Bluege summoned his lefty Lt. Bert Shepard to the mound. In his Baseball in Wartime account of Shepard’s heroism, Gary Bedingfield wrote that on his 34th European Theater mission and while his P-38J Lightening was bombing an airfield near Ludwigslust, east of Hamburg, Shepard’s plane was hit by enemy flak. The shells blew Shepard’s foot off and tore through his right leg. Shepard: “I could feel my foot coming loose at the boot.” The 55th Fighter Group’s pilot’s plane hit the ground at an estimated 380 mph.
Angry German farmers rushed out of their homes, wielding pitchforks, determined to kill Shepard, the American enemy. Luckily for Shepard, First Lieutenant Ladislaus Loidl, a physician in the German Luftwaffe, saw the wreckage’s smoke, and hurried to the site in time to hold off the incensed farmers. Loidl drove the critically injured Shepard to a hospital, but the “terror flyer” wasn’t allowed admittance. Eventually another hospital accepted patient Shepard, and his leg was amputated 11-inches below his knee. After recuperating, Shepard spent the next eight months in POW camps where a Canadian medic and fellow prisoner made Shepard a crude artificial leg from scrap iron, wood and rivets.
Slowly, Shepard, who as a youth moved from Indiana to California to play semi-pro baseball, began tossing the bulb around to get back a baseball’s feel. In California, Shepard’s skills were good enough to land contracts first with the Chicago White Sox and then the St. Louis Cardinals. His goal before and after his life-threatening WWII injuries was to pitch major league baseball.
A prisoner exchange returned Shepard to the U.S., and he was helped along the way to achieving his lifelong dream. At Walter Reed Hospital, Shepard met with Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson who asked about his future plans. Without hesitation, Shepard replied “to play baseball.” A skeptical but impressed Patterson contacted his friend and Senators’ owner Clark Griffith who agreed to give Shepard, now fitted with a new prothesis, a look.
As Shepard recalled, “Mr. Griffith did it out of sympathy more than anything.” But pitching in exhibition games, Shepard impressed – “got ‘em out each time,” he said. On the strength of his outstanding spring training, the Senators offered Shepard a contract with the promise that once he mastered his control, he’d be given a roster spot.
On August 4, Shepard’s big moment arrived. With the Senators getting hammered in game two 14-2 in the fourth inning and with the bases loaded, manager Bluege signaled for Shepard who promptly struck out George Metkovich for the last out. The 13,000 assembled fans, who had followed Shepard’s progress through the nonstop media coverage of the war hero’s progress, rose to their feet to applaud. Over the next five innings, Shepard surrendered only one run on three hits, and fielded his position flawlessly.
In a perfect world, Shepard’s saga would have continued to include his promotion to the starting rotation where he would have helped carry the Senators past the Tigers to win the AL pennant, and then defeat the Chicago Cubs in the October Classic. But the world is imperfect, and 5-1/3 innings with a 1.69 ERA were Shepard’s career MLB totals.
Bluege, hoping to eke out the AL flag from the Tigers, decided to finish the year with his established starters. In 1946, players returned from active WWII duty; Shepard didn’t make the team, but was offered a coaching job. Bored, Shepard asked to be sent to the minors where he pitched for several years at Chattanooga, Waterbury and Modesto. Along his minor league journey, Shepard returned to Walter Reed to have more of his leg amputated.
April is Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness month, and the Amputee Coalition is an organization that would celebrate Shepard’s rewarding life that included the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Metal awards. Before he died in 2008 at age 87, Shepard worked as a Hughes Aircraft safety engineer and an IBM typewriter salesman, played in golf tournaments with his buddy New York Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto, and walked 18-hole golf courses. He flew his own plane to visit amputees across the nation. Part of Shepard’s visits included encouraging demonstrations like effortlessly running the 60-yard dash and dribbling a basketball. In his later years, Shepard advocated for amputee workers’ rights and designed an artificial ankle that allowed those with severe leg injuries like his more mobility.
Shepard’s remarkable story of perseverance and achievement has a heart-warming footnote. For years, Shepard wondered about the German physician who saved his life in Germany, “Who carried me from the wreck? Who saved my life?” In May 1993, a third party arranged a meeting between Dr. Loidl and Shepard. After they met, an emotionally overwhelmed Shepard said: “I prayed for this. And after half a century, my dream has incredibly come true.”
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.
Bert Shepard Was A One-Legged WWII Hero who Pitched for Washington Senators
Better H-1B Visa Is On All Thinking Persons Wishlist
By Joe Guzzardi
Polling shows that 72 percent of likely voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction. No other conclusion could possibly be reached. Inflation is up 8.5 percent since March 2021. At the pump, AAA calculates that the average price per gallon is $4.12, compared to $2.86 a year ago. The Southwest Border is a sieve; record high numbers of illegal immigrants, including single adult males and unaccompanied minors, continue to enter at will. Despite White House denials, rumors persist that the U.S. will soon send soldiers to the Ukraine.
Inflation, the porous border and Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine have kept another persistent problem out of the headlines – the continued displacement of qualified U.S. tech workers from their well-paid, white-collar jobs. Attribute the blame to the cheap-labor-addicted employers who significantly underpay their foreign-born workers. In December 2021, an Economic Policy Institute report coauthored by Ron Hira and Daniel Costa found that thousands of skilled migrants with H-1B visas working as HCL Technologies subcontractors at well-known corporations like Disney, FedEx and Google have been underpaid by at least $95 million. The victims are the underpaid H-1B employees, the displaced U.S. tech workers and others in related fields whose working conditions are downgraded when employment-based visa workers are underpaid without consequence.
For more than 30 years since the Immigration Act of 1990 created the H-1B visa, Congress has winked at users’ rule-bending year after year. By ignoring the deeply rooted problems in how the H-1B employment-based visa is acquired, Congress invites more of the same manipulation. To wit, during 2022’s first few months, criminal charges were filed against Bay Area fraudsters – two pairs of two individuals each – who gamed the complex H-1B rules for substantial financial gain.
The first case occurred in February when federal government officials accused two South Bay residents, Namrata Patnaik and Kartiki Parekh, of submitting 85 fraudulent H-1B visa applications. The visa scam was linked to other crimes that eventually led to $7 million in ill-gotten gains. The indictment charged that from 2011 through April 2017 Patnaik and Parekh submitted the duplicitous applications for foreign workers sponsored by PerfectVIPs, a San Jose-based semiconductor company. The company CEO was Patnaik, and the human resources manager, Parekh. Patnaik laundered proceeds of the visa fraud. In all, the indictment included three counts of visa fraud and one count of money laundering.
The second case, perpetrated by Elangovan Punniakoti and Mary Christeena over the decade that ended in 2020, involved 54 fraudulent H-1B visa applications that were sponsored by an IT staffing firm, Innovate Solutions. Punniakoti and Christeena were chief executive officer and president, respectively. The accused swindlers also were responsible for stating in applications that a foreign worker would be working on an internal project for Innovate Solutions, despite knowing that no such project existed. Visa fraud and money laundering carry ten-year, or longer, prison sentences, and hefty six-figure fines.
The solutions to a more functional H-1B visa, or at least guidelines to the remedies, may sound straightforward, but would be difficult to put into effect. The powerful, deep-pockets Silicon Valley lobby has Congress wrapped around its little finger. Nevertheless, here are a few starting points to consider should a pro-American worker Congress take over in 2022: end the current lottery, and replace it with a merit-based system. Specifically and unequivocally define what task a specialty worker performs to prevent marginal workers with average skills from taking an American’s job, and strengthen the Department of Homeland Security’s onsite enforcement powers so that agents can assure that an H-1B worker is actually performing the job identified on his application.
More important, end the H-1B’s dual-intent feature that allows what should be temporary workers – nonimmigrant workers – to apply for a permanent Green Card. And most important, to remove the well-earned, accurate perception that the U.S. government sanctions modern day, indentured servitude labor conditions, take control of the H-1B visa away from the employer. As the H-1B regulations currently stand, the employee is beholden to his employer because he, the employer, controls the visa and therefore foreign-born workers’ immigration status. If, in the employer’s view, the employee isn’t toeing the company line, whatever it may be, the employer can threaten him with a call to DHS, and recommend removal.
The wish list for cleaning up the H-1B visa is long, and while the Biden administration is in the White House, a pipe dream. But for GOP optimists who are looking ahead to November, and envision stumping on American job creation, an H-1B overhaul that benefits U.S. workers would be a good platform to adopt.
PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Better H-1B Visa Is On All Thinking Persons Wishlist
Dr. Rick Saccone , Ph.d., a Republican, is a prolific author (10 books) and traveler (79 countries). He was elected four times to the State House. One of his previous jobs was as a counter-intelligence officer and special agent in the United States Air Force, based in South Korea, though he also spent some time in North Korea.
He is a member of both FOAC (Firearm Owners Against Crime) and the NRA.
Rick Saccone
His two-decade political-science teaching career at St. Vincent’s College in Latrobe, Pa came to a screeching halt on Jan. 7, 2021, after the administration at St. Vincent’s saw his Facebook posting showing his presence the previous day in Washington, DC.
He is married to Yong Saccone, whom he met in South Korea.
Saccone has been a follower of Christian evangelist David Barton. Barton is an amateur historian and founder of Wallbuilders. Here is NPR’s view of his career, and here is Barton’s website.
Ray Sosa is the third Democratic Candidate for lieutenant governor. He is seeking to become the first Hispanic lieutenant governor. He has served as chairman of the governor’s Human Rights Commitee for a decade. Ray supports BLM (Black Lives Matter) and the GLBT (Gay Lesbian Bisexual Trans) community.
Ray Sosa
He also says that the lieutenant governor position must remain an elected position, never an appointed one, as has been suggested. “Anything less is an assault on our democracy.”
Ray also believes in a merit-based commutation of life sentences for prisoners “so that they can rebuild their lives”.
There are a few other websites that mention Ray Sosa, and the current ones show his support for President Biden, which is to be expected from most Democrats.
American Workers Available Despite Labor Shortage Wailing
By Joe Guzzardi
Depending on who is asked, the Southwest border invasion represents either sovereign America’s demise or the long-awaited answer to a national crisis. For citizens who watch the nightly news and see a flood of foreign nationals pouring over the border, then released into the general public, the imagery is deeply disturbing. But for the Chamber of Commerce, some employers and the establishment media, the U.S. needs more immigration, not controlled borders. In their eyes, the arriving migrants represent a labor market boost that will end the alleged too-few-workers mantra that dominates the business news cycle.
In her op-ed titled “Democrats Are Missing the Bigger Immigration Picture,” The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell argued that more, not fewer, illegal immigrants should be President Biden’s goal. Rampell’s reasoning: the migrants “can fill critical labor market shortages.”
Not surprisingly, the economy, at least as it pertains to filling “critical labor market shortages,” is the exact opposite of how Rampell and other immigration advocates alarmingly describe the situation. The U.S. has a significant overage of potential 16-64 employment-age workers not in the labor force. The problem is that they’re sitting at home.
In their March 2022 analysis of the unemployment and labor force participation among foreign and U.S. born that drew from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey (CPS) data, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) researchers Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that the labor force participation rate, 62.4 percent in March, has been in steep, long-term decline for decades. The fourth quarter of 2021 showed that only 73.2 percent of the working, U.S.-born were in the labor force compared to 77.3 percent in 2000. If labor force participation had remained the same in 2021 as it was in 2000, the researchers concluded, nearly 7 million more U.S.-born Americans would have been in the labor force in 2021.
The labor force participation decline is especially pronounced among the U.S.-born without a bachelor’s degree. Adding mostly unskilled, undereducated migrants with limited English skills, who appear to be the majority among the arriving aliens, would represent more job competition, and ultimately more unemployment for noncollege-educated Americans, particularly already underserved blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.
For decades, working age men have been disappearing from the labor force at record rates. In 1965, the participation rate for prime-age workers ages 25-54 was 96.6 percent – almost all adult men worked. Today, the reported participation rate is about 89.3 percent which means that, based on today’s prime-age 25-54 male population of 64.5 million, only 57.6 million prime-age men are working or actively looking for work – labor force-attached in BLS terms. About 6.9 million men are, therefore, neither working nor looking for work. Conclusion: despite advocates’ hue and cry for more foreign-born labor, millions of potential domestic workers are available; employers must pay fair wages, and offer competitive employment conditions.
The side effects of such a large nonworking adult population are many; all of them bad. People need work to maintain self-esteem and to gain a sense of community involvement. Joblessness has contributed to an increase in domestic abusebetween intimate partners and to alcohol dependency. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that excessive alcohol consumption is responsible for more than 95,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, or 261 deaths per day. These deaths shorten the lives of those who die by an average of almost 29 years or a total of 2.8 million years of potential life lost. Alcoholism is a leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.
Drug-related deaths are at a record high; unemployment is a significant drug dependency risk factor. More than 100,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses between May 2020 and April 2021, according to the CDC. This is an increase of 28 percent from the previous April 2019 to April 2020 period. Unemployment is also a variable in the rising homelessness population. If heads of households are unemployed for long periods, intergenerational poverty can become a long-term consequence. A child’s economic future is most often determined by his living circumstances until he reaches age 23.
The link between the border and U.S. jobs is inexorable. The CIS research team found that since 2000, legal and illegal immigration has added 8.8 million workers. Many in Congress advocate for more international workers even though millions of Americans are available to hire and, because they’re unemployed, are struggling financially and emotionally. Advocacy that ignores unemployment’s deadly consequences is misinformed, self-serving and dishonest.
Candidates Coleman And Daniels Discussed In Lt. Gov Roundup
By Bob Small
And here are two more Republican candidates for lieutenant governor. The primary election is May 17. Previous stories can be found here and here and here.
Jeff Coleman has one of the most extensive websites of any of the candidates and a plethora of experience and recommendations. He has over 50 (!) recommendations from people including Matt Brouillette, Rep. Donna Oberlander, and Sam Rohrer. Rick Santorum said “In a time of division, we need leaders like Jeff who can bring people together.”
Jeff Coleman
Coleman is the son of missionaries who served in the Phillipines during the 1986 overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos.
During his time in the Pennsylvania House, he helped lead the fights against gambling expansion and higher taxes. In an unusual move, after only serving two terms, he decided to retire from the State House to devote more time to his family.
In 2005, Coleman and his wife Rebecca founded Churchill Strategies to help conservative candidates and causes. He’s a graduate of Liberty University and Rebecca is a member of the Borough Council in Lemoyne.
He is also the author of the book “With All Due Respect, Recovering the Manners and Civility of Political Content”.
Teddy Daniels wears many hats. He’s an America Firster, combat veteran, pro-Trumper, and a retired police officer. He’s a recipient of the Combat Infantry Badge and the Purple Heart. In 2002, he was named Law Enforcement Officer of the Year by a Maryland American Legion post.
Teddy Daniels
At West Virginia University, he was a starting guard for its nationally-ranked football team.
He has been a leader in the legal marijuana market and is listed as a security advisor for Cannaspire.
In the last election, Daniels served the Trump campaign as the Northeast US Director of Vets for Trump. He has aligned himself with gubernatorial candidate Douglas Mastriano.
However, Rolling Stone Magazine has posted an article that includes accusations of domestic abuse, child support arrears, suspensions from his police job, and other offenses. The Feb 16 article made it clear that Teddy Daniels had declined an interview request and refused to answer a series of written questions.
There are also other articles echoing these charges, Voters may want to review these and form their own opinions.
Candidates Coleman And Daniels Discussed In Lt. Gov Roundup
In Congress, an inverse relationship exists between the numbers of border crossers and a discussion about how millions of new migrants will be cared for. The greater the numbers, the less is said about open borders and the resultant negative long-term population consequences.
A report from the border indicates that immigration agents stopped about 7,100 worldwide migrants each day during a recent week. Department of Homeland Security officials predict that fiscal 2022 migration totals will surpass last year’s 2 million, plus an estimated 1,000-a-day “gotaways.” Once Title 42 is eliminated, the illegal alien surge will intensify because agents won’t be allowed to return migrants to Mexico based on COVID-19 grounds.
President Biden and those who advise him have privately agreed – they wouldn’t dare make a public announcement – that open borders are okay with them. In this era of shortages in oil and affordable housing and of supply chain disruptions causing product shortages everywhere, what will happen next to the migrants and to the U.S. environment after they settle? Limits to population growth exist, but are a taboo subject in Congress. Remember also that immigrants have multiplier factors like chain migration and increasing family size or starting new family unitsthat must eventually be provided for.
Consider the most fundamental natural resource need that everyone requires: water, and the nationwide dire shortage of it. The National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has created the U.S. Drought Monitor that maps nationwide drought conditions and maintains historical drought records. Ranked according to drought severity, the top seven states include four that are primary migrant destinations: Arizona, New Mexico, California and Texas.
As of March, 90 percent of Texas is experiencing drought conditions with High Plains residents suffering from extreme drought. Forecasters warn that drought conditions could worsen, and some predict the possibility of unprecedented 10-year megadroughts that will bring hotter, drier and more extreme weather than normally seen. The University of Texas and its Environmental Institute analyzed the state’s water crisis and the probability of it expanding. Identified as one of the major contributors to water shortage was population growth. Texas’ population is expected to increase from today’s 29.5 million people to 51 million by 2070, with the majority residing in urban areas. Inarguably, the more people added to Texas’ population, the more difficult it becomes to overcome water shortage challenges.
The expected Texas population increase of 21 million people in less than 50 years is part of the U.S. total population growth of 70 million, to 404 million, during the same half decade. All will be daily consumers of water in multiple ways.
Those calling for increased immigration forget that growth is finite. Sir David Attenborough, the natural history filmmaker and biologist who advocated halving immigration into the United Kingdom to preserve as much of the landscape as possible once said, “I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more.” Attenborough could have mentioned that water supply is an impossible-to-solve problem for any area when there are no limits to population growth.
It is desirable to convey a sense of what happens during the weekly A.V.A. Zoom-calls by providing a “patter” of the (alphabetized) initiatives of each state (embellished by cites from the Internet); they have been grouped but, otherwise, the titles are self-explanatory.
A few weeks ago, I provided the Opening Prayer for an A.V.A. call in which I concluded Mastriano’s lawn-sign theme [advocating action by a community exercising freedom, quoting John 8:36] was captured in a book published in 1956 by Abba Hillel Silver [Where Judaism Differed]. Another quote therefrom channels how the following hyperlinks were chosen, to wit, that they all encompass action-items based upon pondering facts:
In Judaism, the life of contemplation or of study was of significance only insofar as it led to action. {Multiple quotes from sages reinforce this view.} Judah Halevi warns men not to be beguiled by a species of Greek wisdom “that produces flowers but no fruit.” {Silver condemns Greeks for failing to apply their views of the ethical human into seeking social progress.}
Not surprisingly, doings in three states (Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin) dominate, but their activities are often apparent in what’s being pursued elsewhere (even in “red states” that would, at first blush, seem not to be priorities). I suppress my reactions to some of these observations because, often, the media haven’t extracted defensive quotations from Republicans who are blocking progress. Thus, “don’t kill the messenger” when an article is irksome, for it will often serve as a placeholder for what may soon transpire. Tireless heroes (Fincham, Favorito, Gableman in the three states supra, for example) are helping those working in multiple states (to be summarized soon, such as True the Vote); knowing of their works yields ANGER at those who would acquiesce to “let’s move on” postures of too many politicians (particularly statewide Pennsylvania candidates).
ALABAMAGovernor Kay Ivey’s Campaign Ad focuses on protect the election process from being stolen like Trump’s election was stolen in 2020. {This is a popular position.}
Sarah Palin took the lead in a crowded field of 50 other Congressional candidates in ALASKA’s special primary election on June 11; the top four candidates will advance to another special election slated for August 16. Ranked choice voting will be used to decide the winner, in line with a 2020 voter-approved new elections system. {The A.V.A. consensus was that this is only desirable for primaries, recalling Lani Guinier’s book.}
Events in ARIZONA are national trendsetters and, here, lengthy citations are intended to illustrate granular detail that other states may wish to emulate (legislative and judicial).}
Attorney General Mark Brnovich will be making arrests based on his Maricopa County 2020 Election Interim Report, for he already referred Criminal Action Against AZ Secretary of State Katie Hobbs For Election Crimes and floated possible future prosecutions because “There are problematic system-wide issues that relate to early ballot handling and verification.” Recalling the months-long time-delay after the audit and the Senate made referrals to the AG’s office, Tim Griffin opined, “It seems like he is hedging for his U.S. Senate Run. He talks tough, but there isn’t any action at this time.” [Appended are Brnovich’s cover-letter to Senate President Karen Fann (confirming total inaction) plus a 30-page “best practice” report c/o the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission detailing guidelines on establishing proper chain-of-custody that he cited; the latter carries import that should ripple nationally, even in the absence of dropboxes and their inherent faults.]
A.G. Report
Recommendations: Minimize mail-in ballots which are prone to fraud in line with the Carter-Baker Commission; early ballot signature verification should be strengthened, he cites a sample of 100 signature matches from a 2020 election challenged. Experts believed between 6% and 11% of the ballot signatures were inconclusive for matching. He found that the matching was rushed by poorly trained workers.
Signature Verification. Maricopa signature verification is insufficient to guard against abuse.
Chain of Custody. In the 2020 election, localities were supposed to deal with dropbox ballots in the following manner:
o Have two transporters present — one from each party;
o They were to document the location, date/time of arrival, time of departure, number of ballots, and to secure the container of ballots.
o 901,976 ballots were collected from drop boxes. 729k+ were collected during early voting, 172k+ were collected from drop boxes at polling locations.
o Early Voting Ballot Transportation Statements. Out of 1,895 Early Voting Ballot Transportation Statements — 381 forms or 20% were missing required info — signatures, missing receiver signatures, missing security seal numbers, missing documentation of courier signatures. “In other words, it is possible that between 100,000 and 200,000 ballots were transported without a proper chain of custody.”
Maricopa County battled the AG’s office and blocked the investigation.
Nonprofits. He suggests a law that criminalizes members of a nonprofit organization allowing members to engage in ballot harvesting. He also references the just released auditor general’s report on private money; he indicates that the investigation is ongoing but that Arizona law may have been broken in the acceptance and expenditure of this money.
Tim Griffin noted the legislature may stay in session until April 23 and could pass HB 2780; “this bill is sponsored by Rep. John Kavanaugh and co-sponsors include our friend Rep. Mark Finchem.” It passed the full state House and the Senate Elections Committee, but it may be awaiting a vote in the Senate Rules Committee; it’s alive, per AZ Central.
This a simple and relatively uncontroversial bill stating that the recorder (election’s clerk) must publish: [1]—before every election, the names of all registered active & inactive voters; [2]—after every election but before the canvass/certification, the names of those who voted (and their method of voting) with ballot images, and a cast-vote record (confirming batch totals). [https://legiscan.com/AZ/text/HB2780/id/2507582]
[text] Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:
Section 1. Title 16, chapter 4, article 1, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding section 16-407.04, to read:
1. THE COUNTY RECORDER SHALL PUBLISH TEN DAYS BEFORE THE PRIMARY AND GENERAL ELECTION A LIST OF ALL VOTERS WHO ARE ELIGIBLE TO VOTE IN THE ELECTION, INCLUDING PERSONS WHO ARE ON THE INACTIVE VOTER LIST. THE COUNTY RECORDER
2. SHALL POST THIS INFORMATION ON THE COUNTY RECORDER’S WEBSITE AND SHALL REDACT THE VOTER’S DATE OF BIRTH, DRIVER LICENSE NUMBER, NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE NUMBER AND SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER OR PORTION OF THAT NUMBER, AS APPLICABLE, BEFORE PUBLISHING OR POSTING THE LIST.
2. AFTER THE PRIMARY AND GENERAL ELECTION AND FIVE DAYS BEFORE THE COUNTY CANVASS, THE COUNTY RECORDER OR OTHER OFFICER IN CHARGE OF ELECTIONS SHALL PUBLISH AND POST IN DIGITAL FORMAT ON THE COUNTY’S WEBSITE ALL OF THE FOLLOWING:
(a) A LIST OF ALL PERSONS WHO VOTED AND THEIR METHOD OF VOTING.
(b) ALL BALLOT IMAGES WITH THE UNIQUE IDENTIFYING NUMBER FROM THE BALLOT.
(c) THE CAST VOTE RECORD IN A SORTABLE FORMAT.
3. EARLY AND PROVISIONAL BALLOT TABULATORS SHALL IMPRINT A UNIQUE IDENTIFICATION NUMBER ON EACH EARLY BALLOT TABULATED SO AS TO ALLOW THE BALLOT IMAGE TO BE LINKED TO THE PHYSICAL BALLOT. EARLY AND PROVISIONAL BALLOTS SHALL BE SEPARATED BY PRECINCT, TABULATED AND STORED BY PRECINCT.� ELECTION DAY BALLOTS ALSO SHALL BE STORED BY PRECINCT AFTER TABULATION.
4. THE OFFICER IN CHARGE OF ELECTIONS SHALL ENSURE THAT PAPER BALLOTS ARE SORTED AND STORED IN A MANNER THAT ALLOWS FOR CONVENIENT RETRIEVAL.
Republican Governor Kemp and Lt. Governor Duncan killed a key Election Integrity Bill to Unseal Ballots [HB1464], which would have made ballots public records and improved chain of custody procedures; also, it included a controversial limit on poll watchers, per VoterGA, that Republican Gunter refused to allow Favorito to discuss. It became the last bill to pass in the House and it moved through the Senate Ethics Committee before reaching the floor for a last-ditch effort to pass much needed election reforms. In the future, the Wolf Alert System c/o the Constitution Party of Georgia will provide updates.
The departingFulton County (Georgia’s largest jurisdiction) election director (Richard Barron) blasted lawmakers for playing “Old South” politics, getting out-of-town after a Georgia judge ordered Fulton County to “Provide an additional layer of security” for 2020 election records in the Senator Perdue case; he found the scrutiny from running the nation’s sloppiest local election since Broward County Florida’s hanging chads in 2000 to have become too stressful, for he said that the $160,000 salary + benefits wasn’t worth the hassle anymore. [Barron also complained that his staffer, Ruby Freeman, was “visited at home multiple times” because she pulled a suitcase of ballots from under a counting table and counted ballots multiple times.] Under Georgia’s 2021 Elections Law, the state now has increased oversight over such rogue localities and, at the recommendation of the state legislature, the State Election Board appointed a bipartisan performance review panel to investigate whether Baron’s office broke the law in 2020; Barron believes this competence oversight law is adversarial between the state and localities.
In TEXAS, there was an election failure in Dallas, when the locality ran into problems with Republican mail-in ballots; on the other hand, the new Texas law allowed for increased poll watcher access, with few reported problems. Incidence of rejection of mail-in ballots was 2-8% before 2020, under 1% in 2020, and 10% in 2022. Thus, election bureaucrats there and across the country cite such problems to argue their offices are underfunded and need distribution of new federal funds that they can spend indiscriminately.
In SOUTH DAKOTA, rejection of dropboxes was forced by invoking “Bonds For the Win”; All elected public officials are required to be bonded and they must sign an oath to uphold the Constitution of their State as well as the Constitution of the United States for America. Companies, contractors, and even unions are also required to have a surety bond. We the People – The community for whom the bondholder is OBLIGATED to serve. This info was provided by Patricia Tatem [ptatem416@hotmail.com].
Overview Of Election Fraud FindingsOverview Of Election Fraud FindingsOverview Of Election Fraud FindingsOverview Of Election Fraud FindingsOverview Of Election Fraud FindingsOverview Of Election Fraud Findings
Brian Sims, the only openly gay candidate for lieutenant governor was involved in a recent kerfuffle. His campaign posted an ad that ended with the phrase “ENDORSED JOSH SHAPIRO”, which meant to say that Josh Shapiro, the only Democrat running for governor, had endorsed him. The only problem was that, that earlier this year, the state representative that Josh Shapiro had endorsed was Austin Davis of Allegheny County, who hopes to become the first African American elected to the Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor’s office.
In March, Brian Sims lost the support of both the state Democratic leaders and some parts of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transexual) Community.
One possible reason for the state Democrats to endorse a Shapiro-Davis ticket is geographical balance. Shapiro is from Montgomery County and Davis is from Allegheny County. Another possible reason is that David might help with the African American vote, which the Dems heavily depend on.
Of course, it should be noted that neither major party would endorse a candidate who exhibits too much independent thinking.
In a March 3 press conference, more than 40 LGBTQ leaders threw their lot in with Austin Davis.
Among the charges against Brian Sims is his failure to have any legislation passed after a decade in office. He is also alleged to have an abrasive personality –along with many, if not most, of his fellow legislators. Those are the only charges filed against him that could be found.
It should be noted that by necessity there is a great deal pragmatism at work in the LGBTQ Community, as there is in any marginalized community. “The LGBTQ community is not a monolith,” said LGBTQ Victory Fund spokesperson Elliott Imse. The LGBTQ community decided to endorse Davis over Sims.
Why is Josh Shapiro the only Dem Candidate, while the GOP has 10? That’s for another column.
The hour is late to save America from the White House-sanctioned, sovereignty-busting illegal immigrant invasion. To draw a baseball parallel, patriotic citizens are in the bottom of the eighth inning, getting a 6-0 shellacking from the America-last Biden administration. Still, citizens have two at bats – six outs – remaining, time enough to battle back and overcome, assuming their rally starts immediately.
Some observers wonder how things at the border went so wrong, so fast. The explanation is simple: Cheating and lying from Biden, Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Vice President Kamala Harris and the administration’s inner circle of unelected cronies – U.S. Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice, Obama Foundation interim president Valerie Jarrett and Michelle and Barack Obama, who have managed to amass $70 million in wealth since their days in the White House. They threw spit balls and stole signs, and no one holds them accountable.
Biden’s cheating at a criminal, unconstitutional level is indisputable. For his presidency’s entirety, Biden has knowingly, willingly and flagrantly broken numerous immigration laws. The president has defied the entire Immigration and Nationality Act, legislation that defines who can immigrate to the U.S., spells out the procedure for applying for a visa and from where the applications must be submitted, and specifies the rules that new immigrants are legally obligated to follow. These have been dismissed without conferring with Congress. King Biden rules by decree. Shamelessly, even when the courts rule against him, Biden’s brazen rejection of immigration law enforcement proceeds unabated.
In early March, the U.S. District Court of North Texas enjoined the Biden administration’s policy of excepting unaccompanied alien minors from Title 42, and it largely denied the administration’s efforts to dismiss the lawsuit that Texas and Attorney General Ken Paxton filed. The court’s final order found that the Biden administration’s actions are: “arbitrary, capricious … or otherwise not in accordance with law.” Biden ignored the court’s injunction. Instead, the administration continued to resettle significant numbers of UACs into the U.S. – 122,000 unaccompanied migrant children were put in shelters in 2021 – which has led to the largest wave of criminal child smuggling in human history. The flood of resettled illegal alien teens and minors will drain public school resources, overcrowd hospitals and provide a pipeline for Northern Triangle gangs like MS-13.
In another announcement that will, like increased public education and health care costs, add to taxpayers’ burdens, Biden’s DHS Secretary Mayorkas proposed a new rule that would allow migrants to use public welfare benefits like SNAP, CHIP and Medicaid while their Green Card applications are under review. Mayorkas’ proposal violates the public charge principal which states that newly arrived immigrants must be self-sufficient and not dependent on taxpayer subsidies.
Biden isn’t the least bit hesitant to publicly lie about his immigration agenda. In his State of the Union address, with 38 million television viewerstuned in, Biden said: “We need to secure our border, and fix the immigration system” – the chaotic “system” he and Mayorkas created. Since Biden’s January SOU speech, the border crisis has intensified, and will get worse in late May once Title 42 ends.
A healthy part of the blame for the border mess lies with voters who always get the government they vote for. Biden’s campaign commitmentsincluded halting illegal immigrant deportations for 100 days, ending the border wall construction and granting amnesty to unlawfully present aliens. Biden chose as his running mate Calif. Sen. Kamala Harris, whose Senate voting record was among the most liberal.
Before elected to the Senate, and speaking as California’s Attorney General, Harris said “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” Since her appointment as faux border czar, Harris has shown that she, like her boss, can lie, too. Said Harris: “While we are clear that people should not come to the border now, we also understand that we will enforce the law and that we also – because we can chew gum and walk at the same time – must address root causes…” Identifying migration’s root causes, Harris concluded, will end illegal immigration. But migration’s root causes turned out to be the unprecedented, uninterrupted immigration lawbreaking of Biden and Harris.
What happens between now and the November 2022 mid-term election, a date that might mark a turning point for enforcement, depends once again on voters. Democrats have at least four vulnerable open borders incumbents on the ballot in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and New Mexico, more than enough seats to flip the 50-50 deadlocked Upper Chamber, an important step in stabilizing the border invasion. At this historic low point in border enforcement, stabilization would represent a triumph.
