Category: Guest Authors

8th District Remains Williams Dynasty

8th District Remains Williams Dynasty

By Bob Small

Anthony Hardy Williams won handily on May 17 in the Democratic primary race for the 8th Pennsylvania state Senate  District, with 75 percent of the vote.  

The district consists of parts of southwest Philadelphia; and townships of Darby and Tinicum and the boroughs of Collingdale, Colwyn, Darby, Folcroft, Norwood, Sharon Hill and Yeadon, all in Delaware County.

8th District Remains Williams Dynasty
Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams

Williams has been a tireless advocate for charter schools and the legislation enabling them, including tax credit programs.  He also worked to include Holocaust education in the public high-school curriculum, to prevent public school employees with sexual misconduct issues from transferring from one school to another, and to create a Diversity Apprenticeship Program in the labor movement. 

But let’s put this in context.

Williams has held the 8th District seat since 1999 winning it after his father, Hardy Williams, stepped down. Dad had held the seat since 1983.

Maybe it’s understandable the 65-year-old politician thinks the seat is his birthright. He viewed his first real challenge from Paul Prescod, 31-year-old Philadelphia school teacher whose father immigrated from Barbados, as “insulting“.

Good citizens should find it insulting that a politicians would think a challenge is insulting.

Williams supporters are also problematic. Jeffrey Yass for instance is “a Montgomery County billionaire charter-school advocate who generally supports Republicans”. 

Usually, campaign donors favor one party only, but we may be entering a new era of cross-over political supporters.

Prescod has been supported by groups like Reclaim Philadelphia –which helped select one of my former union compatriots, G. Roni Green, as a candidate for state representative; the Philly chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), known most recently for supporting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and the Working Families Party, a Democratic Party support group masquerading as a separate party.

Based on the separate negatives of support for each candidate,, the 27th Ward Democrats declined to make an endorsement. 

It turns out the Pennsylvania GOP was too busy to field a candidate, so Anthony Hardy Williams will be running against a real nobody.  That is, unless a Constitution Party, Green Party, Independent Party or Libertarian Party candidate can attain ballot status by November.

8th District Remains Williams Dynasty

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

By Joe Guzzardi

Among three ongoing wars, the Biden administration concerns itself with only one, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That faraway conflict, which has no national interest associated with it, spawned an inflation-spiking $53 billion U.S. taxpayer infusion into corrupt Ukraine. Biden rode roughshod over Congress, demanding that the final bill get to his desk “in the next few days,” and added that “we cannot afford to delay in this vital war effort.”

Two other incursions, both on U.S. soil, aren’t on Biden’s radar. The first is the Southwest Border war, a different battle than the Ukraine conflict since no bombings or tanks are involved. Nevertheless, the invasion of foreign nationals from more than 150 nations is a war against U.S. sovereignty, and Biden isn’t interested enough to travel to witness first-hand the nation-busting events that he has allowed to develop. In his January 2022 story, Washington Timesreporter Stephen Dinan wrote that “more than 44% of encounters with unauthorized migrants in December were with people from beyond Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. A year ago, that number was just 11%.”

Second is the war against the communities – and specific to this analysis – waged against the local school districts along the border. The establishment media has devoted extensive, merited print coverage and hours of broadcast updates on the Robb Elementary School massacre. Little coverage, however, has been given to Uvalde Mayor’s Don McLaughlin’s statement to Texas Department of Emergency Management officials that, as of Oct. 21, 2021, the academic year’s first few months, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District officials had to lock down schools “48 times this year due to high-speed pursuits and migrants fleeing from law enforcement.” Mayor McLaughlin had previously said that Biden’s border neglect created a series of robberies and car thefts that further stained his economically depressed city.

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

For children subjected to school shutdowns, their experience is traumatic. In the late 1980s, the period which included the Stockton, Calif., Cleveland School shooting that killed five school children and wounded 32, I taught at a Stockton primary school. During that era, Asian gang drive-by murders and home invasion robberies that often included gun violence were widespread as were the subsequent lockdowns. The school’s front office issued an intercom alert, and teachers gathered their students, directing them to move as far away from the classroom door as possible. There they huddled together in the dark until the alert was lifted, about an hour later. Since the children lived in the neighborhood, they knew the potential consequences could be fatal. Lockdowns in what should be safe places like neighborhood schools is what Biden’s border agenda has brought to Uvalde’s children – American kids living in an American city in Texas, an all-American state.

Biden makes no effort to hide his scorn for border enforcement. Even though off-duty Customs and Border Protection agent Jacob Albarado killed the Robb Elementary gunman Salvador Ramos, and thereby doubtless saved dozens of lives, Biden insultingly disinvited 73 of 80 CBP, mostly from the tactical BORTAC unit, to a photo-op with the president. The event was scheduled for a large open-space facility, but administration officials cited space as a reason for the retracted invitations.

Biden is back in the White House, and Capitol Hill is making angry noises about tough gun control legislation. As for the border, no changes will be forthcoming. Once the memorials and burials are over, Uvalde and other border cities will continue, for at least the duration of Biden’s presidency, as stop-overs for illegal alien invaders. Citizens whose lives have been inexorably damaged because of Biden’s criminal disregard for his oath of office are, to him, inconsequential, collateral damage incurred on the woke path to destroying America.

PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

By Joe Guzzardi

Baseball fans who came of age during the 1950s, the National Pastime’s Golden Era, remember Morrie Martin as a journeyman left-handed pitcher who had limited success during his ten-year career. Pitching mostly for the basement-dwelling Philadelphia A’s, Martin’s career record was 38-34. Martin was credited with 23 wins as an A’s; the remaining 15 were spread out among the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Chicago White Sox, the Baltimore Orioles and the St. Louis Cardinals. The stout lefty from Dixon, Mo., made brief appearances for the Chicago Cubs, but didn’t earn a decision.

Martin was much more than a middling MLB hurler who walked more batters, 252, than he struck out, 245. Before Martin was inducted into the U.S. Army on June 2, 1943, he compiled above-average minor league credentials, 16-7, in Grand Forks, N.D., with the Class C Chiefs and in St. Paul, Minn., with the American Association’s Saints, two Chicago White Sox affiliates. Martin’s pitching stints with the Saints represented the last times he touched a baseball until his return home from WWII in 1945.

As Gary Bedingfield reported on his “Baseball in Wartime” website and pursuant to information drawn from Stan Opdkye’s Society of American Baseball Research essay, “Morrie Martin,” Martin entered military service with the Army at Jefferson Barracks, Mo., and then served overseas with the 49th Engineer Combat Battalion where he took part in amphibious landings as part of Operation Torch at North Africa, Operation Husky at Sicily and Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A's

As an engineer, Martin was among the first to reach shore. Shortly after the D-Day landing, and while on guard duty near Saint-Lô, France, Martin was hit by shrapnel in his neck, left hand and arm. Despite his injuries, Martin remained on the front lines. Late in 1944, he was engaged in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Mountains of Belgium and suffered frostbite in the bitterly cold temperatures. Nevertheless, Martin remained with his unit until 1945 when he suffered serious, near-fatal injuries.

After Martin took two more rounds of shrapnel wounds, he was buried alive in Germany when the house he took shelter in was shelled. Left for dead, Martin and two other soldiers clawed their way out to rejoin their battalion. At the Battle of the Bulge, Martin suffered a bullet wound to the thigh, and nearly lost his leg when gangrene set in.

Evacuated to a hospital in Saint-Quentin, France, Martin caught a big break. A nurse looked at his chart, saw that he was a professional ball player, and urged him to reject the doctors’ advice that he give his permission to amputate his leg. Instead, more than 150 penicillin shots saved Martin’s leg from amputation, and he slowly worked his way back to the big leagues. Discharged from the Army in October 1945, Martin joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946, and worked his way up through Branch Rickey’s fiercely competitive minor league system.

On April 25, 1949, Martin made his first MLB start against the Boston Braves, the 1948 National League champions. Martin pitched seven quality innings, but his opponent, Bill Voiselle, who pitched a complete game shutout, was better. For the balance of his career, Martin shuffled back and forth between the majors and the minors. Martin peaked in 1951 with the A’s when he compiled an 11-4 record.

On May 25, 2010, in Washington, Mo., Martin died from lung cancer at age 87. For his service in World War II, he was awarded two Purple Hearts, four battle stars and an Oak Leaf Cluster. Prior to his death, Martin told a newspaper reporter how much he valued his wartime service to his country: “We had a job to do, and we did it. I don’t have regrets about the time I missed in baseball. I’m proud of what we did. I’d do it again.” Until that interview, Martin, like most of the Great Generation, was always willing to talk about baseball, but refused to speak about his war heroism.

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

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

Swarthmore Getting New State Rep

Swarthmore Getting New State Rep

By Bob Small

Besides the State wide elections, there were other elections on Primary Day. Some of these elections may actually be just as important to our day-to-day lives.

On May 17, for the first time in four election cycles , not one vote in Swarthmore was cast for Leanne Kruger-Braneky aka Leanne Kruger. The ballot was a matter of shock and dismay for those Swarthmoreans unaware that the last census had caused the Legislative Reapportionment Commission to move Swarthmore out of the 161st District into the 165th.

She was first elected in 2015 as Leanne Kruger-Braneky, but sometime over the past few terms the couple divorced and thus, she lost her hyphenated name. Though originally from New Jersey, she has been granted “unofficial Swarthmore citizenship. “ My experience is that she, or her office, knew what to do for what we call “constituent service”, helping anyone who needed to weave through the labyrinthine government bureaucracy, without it being dependent on “party” or any inside knowledge, which is the way it should be but normally isn’t.  We will miss her for the example she set.

Swarthmore Getting New State Rep
Leanne Kruger no longer in Swarthmore

Leanne will be facing Ed Mongeluzzo in November for her new position.

He is focusing on outreach to veterans. According to his website and Facebook posts, his finances are almost nil.  Hopefully, the GOP  will realize he is running against a Democrat and provide support.

The replacement legislator, now that Swarthmore is the 165th, is Jennifer O’Mara.  Jennifer comes from a blue collar background and  has an inspiring backstory.   She is both a graduate and an employee of the fabled University of Pennsylvania.  Jennifer believes “there is more that unites us than divides us”.

As Chris Freind has pointed out, however, she has a free ride in November.

This would be the same free ride the Congressional Candidates in our congressional, 3, 13, and 14 have this November. 

Wonder how that happened?

Hopefully, someone(s) from the Constitution, Green, or Libertarian Party or even an Independent candidate will  get the requisite signatures to be on some of these ballots.   

Otherwise, why waste the space on the ballot?

Swarthmore Getting New State Rep

Not Missing Swarthmore’s Michael’s

Not Missing Swarthmore’s Michael’s

By Bob Small

We’ve been discussing the proposed 5-floor condo in Swarthmore for quite a while, but a recent letter in The Swarthmorean adds a new perspective.

In the May 27 issue of The Swarthmorean, John Brodsky made reference to a former pharmacy in Swarthmore. 

“When Michael’s — with its soda fountains, news stand, phone booths, etc. — was replaced by doughnuts (Dunkin Donuts), Swarthmore was pretty much sunk!” he wrote.

Not Missing Swarthmore's Michael's

My experience at Michael’s in the early 1990’s was not a happy one.  The main cashier I always ran into there was our Swarthmorean version of “The Soup Nazi”, a man who always had a nasty word to share with customers.  Upon discovering The Medicine Shoppe about a mile away in Morton, which did not have a “Soup Nazi”, many of us Swarthmoreans transferred our business there.

Now there’s another store down the block from Dunkin Donuts for all us “urban apartment transplants”. Any time I’ve gone into Swarthmore True Value Hardware and asked for “something that you use to fix a?!” and name the item, or try to, or ask for a “whatchamacallit” or maybe even a “veeblefetzer”, Charlie and all his employees are unfailingly pleasant and helpful. What they can’t locate, they will try to order.  

Because of their attitude, I generally avoid going to Office Despot or some such big-box store unless absolutely necessary. This is one way a small business can continue to thrive, but it requires some effort.

On another topic, I’ve finished my Ivermectin regimen prior to the latest recount. I’m waiting to get back to a stronger version of myself, when I’ll have some more thoughts on lesser-known Pennsylvania politicians and politics.

Not Missing Swarthmore’s Michael’s

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB’s First Fatality In WWI

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB’s First Fatality In WWI

By Joe Guzzardi

Eddie Grant, a Harvard Law School graduate and former Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and New York Giants third baseman, was the first major league baseball player killed in World War I. In all, seven other major league players lost their lives in the Great War. They are Lt. Tom Burr, plane crash; Lt. Harry Chapman, illness; Lt. Larry Chappell, influenza; Pvt. Harry Glenn, pneumonia; Cpt. Newton Halliday, hemorrhages; Cpl. Ralph Sherman, drowned, and Purple Heart winner Sgt. Robert “Bun” Troy, shot.
 
Known affectionately among his teammates as “Harvard Eddie,” Grant debuted in the majors in 1905 after he graduated from Harvard where he starred at baseball and was the basketball team’s top scorer. Grant eventually would play 990 games as an infielder through 1915. An average dead ball era hitter, neither spectacular nor a detriment, Grant’s career average was .249 with five home runs. Grant’s best big-league season came in 1909 when he hit .269 as Philadelphia’s leadoff hitter and finished second in the National League with 170 hits. Opposition players considered him an above average fielder and particularly adept at handling bunts. In the 1913 World Series which the Giants lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, 4-1, Grant saw limited action. He pinch-ran and scored in Game 2, and in Game 4, he hit a foul ball pop up that the A’s catcher easily snagged.

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB's First Fatality In WWI
Harvard Eddie Grant

On April 6, 1917, two years after his baseball career ended at age 33, and with his law practice barely underway, Grant enlisted in the U.S. Army, the first major league player to sign up. In a letter to a friend, Grant proudly wrote: “I had determined from the start to be in this war should it come to us…I believe there is no greater duty than I owe for being that which I am — an American citizen.’’
 
Tom Simon, writing for the Society for American Baseball Research, recounts Grant’s fateful demise in his defense of America against the advancing Germans. On October 2, 1918, Grant’s 307th Regiment launched an attack in France’s Argonne Forest, a rugged, heavily wooded area with thick underbrush, deep ravines and marshes. Soon, Grant’s superior officers were killed, and Eddie took command. By the morning of the third day, October 5, Grant was exhausted. He hadn’t slept since the offensive’s beginning, and his fellow officers noticed him sitting on a stump with a cup of coffee in front of him, too weak to lift the cup.
 
One of Grant’s troops, a former Polo Grounds policeman, remembered: “Eddie was dog-tired but he stepped off at the head of his outfit with no more concern than if he were walking to his old place at third base after his side had finished its turn at the bat. He staggered from weakness when he first started off, but pretty soon he was marching briskly with his head up.”
 
When the Germans pressed forward, Grant yelled at his men to seek cover while he remained standing, waving his arms to call for stretchers. Grant’s courageous effort to save his fellow soldiers cost him his life. Maj. Charles Wittlesey, Grant’s friend who led the 77th Division in the battle historians call “the Lost Battalion,” said: “When that shell burst and killed that boy, America lost one of the finest types of manhood I have ever known.’’ When the battle ended, Grant’s fellow soldiers, realizing their leader had been killed, were overheard saying, “The best man in the entire regiment is gone.”
 
Grant is interred at France’s Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery along with more than 14,000 American soldiers. World War I historian Mike Hanlon has led tours of the war’s battlefields and the cemetery where he talks about Purple Heart recipient Grant.
 
Then-MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wanted Grant added to the Hall of Fame for his service to the country. Although Landis’ fine idea was rejected, Grant had a Bronx highway named after him, and a ball yard in his hometown Franklin, Mass. The Giants, Grant’s last major league team, placed a bronze plaque in his honor on the center field fence of the Polo Grounds on Memorial Day 1921. The plaque identified Grant as Soldier – Scholar – Athlete, doubtless the order in which Eddie would like them listed.
 
 
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

By Joe Guzzardi

If only President Biden and Congress loved the U.S. with the same passion the federal government demonstrates toward Ukraine, then inflation-stricken, poorer-by-the-day taxpayers wouldn’t be saddled with $53.6 billion debt that has no ties to their national interest. While in South Korea, Biden signed a $40 billion emergency bill to help Ukraine defend its border against Russia’s incursion. The $40 billion, bumped up from Biden’s original $33 billion request, represents nearly three times the $13.6 billion that Congress approved in March for Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid.

Upon hearing the news that the huge U.S. funding package would be on the way, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, “The war will be bloody, there will be more battles,” which translates to “more U.S. taxpayer money will have to be sent.” One thing is certain: another round of funding for Ukraine will be rushed through Congress without a meaningful exchange with Americans who deserve to know what’s really in these bills, how Ukraine accounts for the billions of dollars, if at all, and the net cost to beleaguered taxpayers to fund a faraway war with no end in sight, and without a defined, tangible mission.

Examples of how rushing into foreign entanglements went awry in Iraq and Afghanistan should be burned into the memories of Biden and members of Congress. A fact sheet that congressional Democrats distributed said that the funding will be used to assist Ukrainian military, national security forces and to provide weapons, equipment, training, logistics and intelligence support. But, to repeat, no one truly knows how the billions of dollars will be spent or who’s accountable.

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

Equally as troubling as the failure to learn from the past and a high likelihood of no accountability, the U.S. is sending money it doesn’t have. The nation’s current debt is $30.5 trillion or about $91,500 per every single person in the country. Not only is the U.S. “leadership” saddling its citizenry with an enormous debt burden, America’s Southwest border is wide open to all comers from countries near and far.

Taxpayers fund every aspect of the Southwest border invasion – housing, transportation and much more. While record-breaking 8.5 percent inflation has driven millions of low-income families to the brink, Americans watch on their nightly television news broadcasts the embarrassing spectacle of ranking congressional officials bowing and scraping to Zelenskyy. On separate trips, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell traveled to Ukraine with their respective delegations to express their support. Pelosi’s office sent what it described as an “unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine.” McConnell spoke about Ukraine’s defense of its sovereignty and its unity, ironic when the U.S. border remains open to foreign nationals, fentanyl-pushing drug cartels and human traffickers that earn $150 billionannually preying on the vulnerable.

The huge Ukraine funding packages made the headlines and drew the attention of many concerned, weary Americans. But in related news that provides enormous insight into where Congress’ priorities lay – hint: not with American citizens – look at the fine print in the “Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2022” that authorized Ukraine’s $40 billion cash cow. Buried in the bill was a proposal to provide the 70,000 unvetted Afghan evacuees with green cards which would mean that, in all probability, they’ll never return home. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas improperly used parole to admit the unvetted Afghans into the U.S. The Immigration and Nationality Act permits parole to be granted only on a case-by-case basis, and not granted to 70,000 foreign nationals.

Green cards for Afghans were struck from the bill’s final language, but is certain to reappear in future legislation. In the meantime, another parole program, “Uniting for Ukraine,” sailed through. Congress allocated $900 million for a Ukrainian relief fund through September 20, 2023, for “Refugee Entrance and Assistance.” Tellingly, many Ukrainian parolees had already been safely resettled in Europe where they had received temporary immigration status, work permits and free healthcare. The Ukrainians had a good deal; now, the Biden administration has provided a better one.

Biden’s presidency is a bonanza for invading foreign nationals who Customs and Border Protection are forced to welcome. Drug traffickers and human smugglers, as well as Afghans and Ukrainians improperly paroled, are all welcome. Biden’s agenda excludes everyday Americans struggling to get along. Sixteen months into Biden’s presidency, most Americans would be encouraged to see the tiniest hint that the president cares about their futures, but they shouldn’t hold their breath.


PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
 

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

Biden Is Bad Transformation

Biden Is Bad Transformation

By Joe Guzzardi

In March 2021, The New York Times published a commentary about President Joe Biden and referred to him as “transformational.” Columnist David Brooks heaped praise on Biden for his economic agenda, and concluded that the government’s role in American life is changing. However, Brooks continued, Biden isn’t causing the shifts in government philosophy, “but he is riding them.”

Today’s “Bidenism,” compared to the formerly moderate Biden, has spurred “large numbers of thinkers” to cast aside their concerns about inflation, as well as other pesky, nagging economic and emotional doubts about government’s place in the lives of citizens. If given the chance, and considering 2021’s rough ride, Brooks might pull back on his flattering column.

During his campaign, Biden promised the nation a transformational government, and he’s delivered, although not quite in the manner some envisioned. Revoking the Keystone XL oil pipeline, halting development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord, halting construction of the Southern border wall, signing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and signing the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Investment Act are doubtless transformational. But they were not, as pundits like Brooks had envisioned, universally embraced.

On his pledge to transform America, Biden has delivered, more successfully but with greater damage to his presidency than his most ardent supporters could have envisioned. An NBC poll taken in mid-May showed the president’s approval rating at 39 percent, largely because for the year-long period ended April 2022, the annual inflation rate was 8.3 percent.

Biden Is Bad Transformation

Biden’s transformative immigration developments are never-ending. On back-to-back days, May 16 and May 17, two immigration-related stories broke that demonstrate how porous the U.S. border is and how indifferent the White House is to enforcement. First, the Department of Homeland Security announced that in April U.S.-Mexico migrant encounters hit a new historic high of 234,088; 110,000 were released into the U.S., while under Title 42 about 97,000 were returned.

On May 20, Judge Robert Summerhays, Western District of Louisiana Judge, granted a preliminary injunction blocking Biden from ending Title 42 on May 23. But Biden is defiant in his determination to end Title 42. The Department of Justice immediately announced they will appeal the decision. As Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas know, without Title 42, about 500,000 illegal aliens will overwhelm the U.S. border each month and then move into the U.S. interior.

During a Texas border tour, Mayorkas admitted that the U.S. will continue to welcome aliens who make what he mistakenly called a valid claim of asylum protection under U.S. laws. But aliens who travel from around the world are, as an MIT study confirmed, overwhelmingly economic migrants and as such don’t qualify for asylum. The ultimate consequence of Biden’s willful refusal to enforce immigration law: Before his four-year term ends, millions of illegal immigrants will have been admitted, family reunification will begin, and a major demographic transformation of the nation will be underway.

In another recent immigration development, U.S. authorities discovered a tunnel equal to the length of six football fields that drug smugglers had used for an undetermined but doubtlessly lengthy period. When authorities located the tunnel, they seized nearly 2,000 pounds of cocaine, meth and heroin. Because of indifference to border enforcement, U.S. fentanyl deaths exceeded 100,000 in 2021. Cartels, confident that the federal government won’t interfere, also profit from human trafficking, including transporting underage girls for prostitution.

As enthusiastic as Democrats may have been during Biden’s presidential 100-day honeymoon period, today they’re proceeding with caution. Many involved in competitive mid-term elections this fall are hedging, as any watchful politician would, as to the feasibility of accepting the president’s offer to join them on the campaign trail. Giving the appearance of endorsing Biden’s unpopular American transformation will lead to their defeat.


PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Biden Is Bad Transformation Biden Is Bad Transformation

Fetterman Benefitted From Poor Lamb Campaign

Fetterman Benefitted From Poor Lamb Campaign

By Bob Small

Despite his hospitalization for a stroke, during Stroke Awareness Month, Lt Gov. John Fetterman won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate with almost 60 percent of the vote. 

He won because of an inept campaign by his main opponent.  There may have been other factors restricting the vote totals of his other two opponents, such as homophobia and Islamaphobia.

Fetterman Benefitted From Poor Lamb Campaign
John Fetterman

Fetterman’s main opponent, Congressman Conor Lamb (D-17), was widely expected to mount a strong challenge, but not so.

“It’s one of the worst campaigns I’ve ever seen run,” Democratic Party strategist Mike Mikus said in an interview in McClatchy DC.

Lamb received around 26 percent of the vote.

“Voters told the New York Times they saw Conor Lamb as another Joe Manchin,” said political commentator Krystal Ball.  

So much for centrists.

State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-181), with 10 percent of the vote, was hoping to be the first Black man and first gay person to be a Pennsylvania senator.

His campaign promised to work towards abolishing the Electoral College and to establish a moratorium on new fracking sites. He often campaigned with his husband, Dr. Matthew Jordan Miller Kenyatta.

There’s a short documentary about Kenyatta’s previous election run called “Going Forward,” created by Seven Knots Productions.

In an interview after his loss, Kenyatta stated that “Allowing any one of these Republicans to become Pennsylvania’s senator will be the canary in the coal mine for democracy dying on our watch,” said Kenyatta in an interview after his loss.

Not quite a centrist.

The fourth and final candidate was Alex Khalil, a Jenkintown councilwoman and a long-time Democratic activist.  She has electrical engineering and law degrees from Temple University, and a library and information technology degree from Drexel.

“We really didn’t have enough help for small businesses in this country,” she said regarding government aid during the pandemic. Another issue of concern to her is the inclusion of more job-training programs for students.

She mentions some really innovative ideas, including “the right to farm”, PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes), which would affect the endowments of colleges and universities, and funding for high-speed rail in Pennsylvania.

Ms. Khalil was hoping to be the first woman elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania, as well as the first Muslim senator. She is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. 

Fetterman Benefitted From Poor Lamb Campaign

Population Surges Drying West

Population Surges Drying West

By Joe Guzzardi

The grisly discovery of human remains at the bottom of Lake Mead is a grim reminder of the Southwest’s growing drought crisis. In early May, a family on a boating outing found, partially buried in Lake Mead National Recreation Area’s muddy banks, a four-decades-old skeleton of a man, a suspected homicide, stuffed into a rotted-out barrel. Skeletal remains were also discovered in May at nearby Callville Bay.

Asked if the victim might have been a mob hit, Geoff Schumacher, the vice president of exhibits and programs at Las Vegas’ Mob Museum, said: “I have a feeling that as this water continues to recede, we’re going to be finding more interesting things at the bottom of Lake Mead.” Schumacher may have been referring to the B-29 Superfortress wreckage found in 2015 in Lake Mead’s 130 feet of water; in 1948, when the bomber crashed, Lake Mead’s depth was 260 feet.

While Schumacher isn’t a climatologist, he like other Far West residents is aware of the inevitable and irreconcilable clash between too many people and dwindling natural resources, primarily water. Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States and part of a system that supplies water to at least 40 million people across seven states and northern Mexico. Today, it’s dropped to its lowest level since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era.

As of August 22, 2021, Lake Mead was filled to just 35 percent of its capacity, and now is at 30 percent. The low water level comes at a time when 95 percent of nine Western states’ land is affected by some level of drought; 64 percent is considered extreme or worse. Shrinking capacity continues a 22-year megadrought that some experts consider the worst in 1,200 years. Megadroughts are defined as droughts that last two decades or longer, but they are not measured by their intensity.

Population Surges Drying West

Snowfall in the Rocky Mountains is Lake Mead’s primary water source. But Audubon Southwest’s policy director Haley Paul said, “Even when the Rocky Mountains get to near-normal levels of snowfall and overall precipitation, what we’ve seen in the last few years is below average river runoff.” Paul explained that drought and heat mean thirstier soils and plants that soak up more water before the precious commodity ever reaches rivers – a compounding domino effect that, because the West is on year 22 of an extended megadrought, will take 22 wet winters to climb out of the hole.

An underreported variable in Lake Mead’s water levels is the population explosion – not an exaggerated expression – in California, Arizona and Nevada. In 1950, the population of Arizona, California and Nevada were, respectively, 750,000, 10 million and 158,000. Today, Arizona, California and Nevada have 7.6 million, 39.7 million and 3.2 million residents. Their principal cities, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Las Vegas have, over the same 70-year period, grown from 221,000 to 4.7 million, from 2 millionto 12.5 million and from 35,000 to 2.8 million. Taken alone, the three states in the aggregate have about 40 million more people since 1950 bathing in, cooking with and drinking water. Housing complexes, luxury hotels, golf courses and mega-mansions are major water devourers.

No end is in sight to irresponsible water usage. The best California Gov. Gavin Newsom has come up with is a tepid, ignored suggestion that his constituents voluntarily limit everyday water consumption. The State Water Resources Conservation Board said that per-capita urban water usage rose 7 percent in March compared to last year, and rose 18.9 percent when compared to March 2020.

Although political correctness forbids identifying immigration as population growth’s major driver, Census Bureau facts confirm the reality. In their Center for Immigration Studies analysis that drew exclusively from Census Bureau data, Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler predicted that, by 2060, immigration will add 75 million people to the U.S. population. In 2017, the U.S. had 35.8 million legal and illegal immigrants. Those immigrants had 16.9 million U.S.-born children and grandchildren.

In sum, immigration added 52.7 million people to the U.S. population between 1982 and 2017, accounting for a little over 56 percent of overall population growth. A related Camarota-Zeigler study, which also drew from Current Population Survey’s monthly data, found that in November 2021, 46.2 million legal and illegal immigrants lived in the U.S., the largest number of immigrants ever recorded in a federal government survey or census dating back to 1850.

No one controls rainfall, but the federal government can help alleviate the worsening water crisis by managing immigration to levels consistent with the available natural resources. If officials continue to shirk their responsibility, then an increasing number of West Coast communities will eventually run dry, and civil disruption over water’s absence will likely ensue.

PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Population Surges Drying West