If you have to carry a card in your pocket (or pass on your phone) proving you injected a drug into your body to gain access to grocery stores, receive medical care or to freely move about society than you no longer live in a free country and you are no longer sovereign over your own body-And that should concern everyone-regardless of political party or medical choices. Venessa Leianne
This even enters into the magical world of sports, and Flyers and Sixers fans will need proof of COVID-19 vaccination.
The average Philly Sports fan has a deservedly confrontative reputation. Would either of these fan-groups meekly agree to provide this information? Well, we humans have a way of rationalizing behavior to achieve certain ends, and this means we’ll use whatever means we need for our ends.
Taking this a step further, would we agree to implanting a Flyers or Sixers “chip”, especially if this included free Flyers or Sixers merchandise. Surely no one would agree to this, surely.
In 1997, former 76ers basketball player Charles Barkley became infamous, for throwing a man through a bar window. When asked by a Philly sports radio show host why he threw him through the first floor window, he allegedly said “Because I wasn’t on the damn second floor.”
Even though he was no longer playing in Philly, we all supported him for being a “Philly guy”.
I’ve had the two vaccines so I have the card. However, I can’t think of any activity which is that important that I would give up my private information just so I could- So I’ll miss going to concerts, Poetry Readings, restaurants, sports, when not zoomable. And I will miss some of this.
Also, I’ve decided not to get a booster after inhaling the Robert Kennedy, Jr, book via my wife, who quoted from every chapter. (I’m busy reading Finks by Joel Whitney about writers who were seduced by the CIA. This way I’ll know which mid-century writers not to read.)
Chipping of humans is either happening or being proposed in France, Mexico, Sweden, the UK, and numerous other countries. My favorite article, from October 2017 is Don’t Trust the Chinese to Make Microchips for the Military.
Economic Policy Institute analysts Ron Hira, a Howard University associate professor, and his colleague Daniel Costa, EPI’s director of U.S. immigration law, international labor migration, farm labor and a forced migration specialist, recently published their research study titled “New Evidence of Widespread Wage Theft in the H-1B Program.” The title’s key words are “new,” because H-1B wage theft is a long-standing abuse, and “widespread” because incidents similar to those Hira and Costa exposed have occurred for years, and at some of the nation’s most well-known and deep-pocketed corporations.
A small sampling among the offenders includes Disney, Google, FedEx, Caterpillar and Facebook. The estimated, accumulated wage theft, Hira and Costa calculated, is $95 million, a devastating underpayment to H-1B holders. In this case, the Indian employer HCL, referred to as a “body shop,” cheated its fellow Indian nationals. Foreign-born visa holders aren’t the only victims. U.S. workers displaced by H-1Bs or who experienced wage depression because of the abundant availability of cheaper H-1B labor also lose.
The latest H-1B-related scandal came from the India-based HCL Technologies, full name Hindustan Computers Limited, an IT staffing firm that, in 2020, earned $11 billion. HCL’s Santhosh Jayaram, the company’s Global Head of Sustainability will, according to its website, enable the company “to refine and focus its current agenda and strategy in the key areas of environmental, social and governance (ESG).
Despite the lofty language, after EPI reviewed an internal HCL document, released as part of a whistleblower lawsuit against the firm, Hira and Costa found that large-scale and criminal illegal H-1B worker underpayment “is a core part of the firm’s competitive strategy.” The lawsuit’s discovery process revealed that HCL engaged in non-payment of Social Security, Medicare and federal unemployment insurance taxes on wages paid and that the company fraudulently used B-1 tourist visa holders as workers, and hired L-1 international executive visas, which cost less than H-1B workers. H-1B statutes mandate that employers pay their H-1B workers no less than the actual wages paid to their similarly employed U.S. workers.
But unscrupulous employers elude those federal guidelines by contracting with IT outsourcing firms. That tactic essentially puts outsourced H-1B workers in a different DOL category for evaluation, and allows them to avoid the wage requirements. The loophole that Hira and Costa identified is treating “contractor hires differently than direct hires when enforcing the wage and other provisions in the H-1B statute,” which leads to the extensive wage theft.
Because DOL considers contract hires different than direct hires, the agency doesn’t view the abuses as actionable violations that would normally lead to sanctions. The outsourcing loophole allows firms like HCL and the big tech companies that use outsourcing firms to get around those provisions. Because of its failure to enforce the wage laws or close the outsourcing loophole, DOL is in effect subsidizing and encouraging the offshoring of high-paying U.S. jobs in information technology that once served as a pathway to the increasingly elusive middle class.
The question that Hira and Costa, as well as other H-1B critics and U.S. tech workers’ defenders, want answered is when will the Department of Labor acknowledge that employers have and will continue to commit crimes that violate federal law as long as the federal government aids and abets them. DOL has idly stood by, watched passively as H-1B abuses that harm middle-class American IT workers have piled up. DOL’s indifference has, in effect, subsidized the offshoring of white-collar jobs to overseas workers.
Companies like HCL that earn billions of dollars annually can afford to pay a fair salary to their employees without sacrificing much if anything to their bottom lines. But the blame isn’t all on HCL. DOL’s role in the ongoing H-1B wage scandal must be emphasized. DOL’s Labor Secretary is Marty Walsh, the former Boston mayor who once declared that his city would be a “safe place” for illegal immigrants. Walsh went further, offering his office as shelter for illegal aliens facing deportation. An open borders advocate like Walsh is the wrong person to appoint Labor Secretary.
In 2017, under President Trump, DOL announced actions to increase protections for American workers, and more aggressively confront entities committing visa program fraud and abuse. The Biden administration has unfairly and inexplicably dashed the goal of protecting U.S. tech workers and salvaging their jobs. With the recent nixing of the H-1B lottery rule that would prioritize selection based on highest wages, the new Biden standard is to use any of a variety of employment-based visas to add as many foreign-born workers as possible to the labor pool even though Americans will suffer. Look no further to the immigration provisions added to the House passed Build Back Better bill that Biden eagerly wants passed soon.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Clock Ticking On Biden Build Back Better By Joe Guzzardi
If only Congress would take its winter break, then the rest of the nation – in other words, the non-elite – could enjoy the Christmas season. But, a congressional recess much before December 23 may be as improbable as a down-the-chimney visit from jolly Old St. Nick. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the quintessential Christmas grinch, has vowed to keep the Upper Chamber in session until Build Back Better (BBB) gets a full floor vote.
Schumer may be optimistic, but he’s also stubborn. Several road blocks stand in Schumer’s way. First, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough who has ruled twice against including amnesty in the $1.7 trillion social spending bill must be favorably swayed. The parliamentarian decides what can be included in Senate legislation, and has rejected two previous proposals. Most congressional Democrats, Senate and House, want amnesty as well as other affirmative benefits including work permission granted to about seven or eight million unlawfully present foreign nationals. But when amnesty is the goal, Democrats’ never-say-die commitment evolved into a third iteration for MacDonough’s review. Plan C’s fate is unknown.
Schumer’s second Senate hurdle is West Virginia’s Joe Manchin who has sent various signals that he’s leery. Most recently, Manchin said that he wouldn’t defy the parliamentarian’s immigration decision. Manchin: “The bottom line is the parliamentarian; you stick with the parliamentarian, that’s all. You stick on every issue. You can’t pick and choose.”
From the outset, Manchin has expressed concerns over what’s now a nearly $2 trillion package; he was influential in cutting the price tag from its original $3.5 trillion. But despite the $1.5 trillion cut, Manchin, concerned about hyperinflation and the nation’s tenuous economy, is still edgy. Manchin also reiterated his long-held concern that that Democrats are using budget gimmicks to conceal the true, higher cost of the president’s spending bill.
For months, President Biden assured Americans that BBB wouldn’t cost a penny. In September, Biden tweeted that his then $3.5 trillion BBB agenda “costs zero dollars,” a claim that Republicans bluntly labeled “a lie.” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) quickly countered Biden with the impossible-to-dispute calculation that a $3.5 trillion cost can’t possibly translate to zero dollars.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation gave Tenney a figurative A+ math grade. They projected that the modified version of the bill they reviewed would increase the national deficit by $3 trillion over the 2022 – 2031 period, a total that includes the effect of interest cost.
BBB’s amnesty provisions alone will cost taxpayers $124 billion over the first decade, and would create an additional $359 billion in net costs during the second post-passage decade, making amnesty’s total net cost over 20 years a whopping $483 billion.
As the Center for Immigration Studies observed, amnesty costs increase over time as illegal immigrants become eligible for more and more social programs, especially Social Security and Medicare. The millions of illegal immigrants that BBB covers will also immediately qualify for parole, an immigration status that includes work permission, protection from deportation and other affirmative benefits. An already-weak labor market that the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report reflected will expand when millions of newly work-authorized immigrants enter the employment market to compete with or displace Americans.
Little if anything in BBB will enhance American lives. On the other hand, Biden, congressional Democrats, D.C. bureaucrats, the big businesses that hire cheap labor, illegal immigrants and the immigration lawyers they’ll hire to advise them will all gain significantly.
The best thing BBB opponents have in their favor, Republicans and Democrats alike, is that if Manchin votes “yea,” he’ll be out of his Senate job in 2024. In 2016, heavily Republican West Virginia rejected Biden; Trump carried the state by nearly 40 points, a margin that Manchin can’t hope to make up if he endorses BBB.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressive for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Medical-Industrial Complex Makes Finding Right Door A Problem
By Bob Small
For those of us trapped in old norms, we have to rethink, go to different ways of acting, thinking and speaking. My previous norm was that there were males (including drag queens) and females. There was Bi, Gay, and straight. There was the occasional adult Transexual and, to my shame, I never considered what bathrooom , of the two available possibilities, he/she would use.
Now the times and tides have changed. It seems there are numerous High school Transexuals (more about that later), which has caused “issues:”
In Philadelphia, according to the Billy Penn Newsletter, all schools must have an accessible gender neutral Bathroom (as of August) but not all do.
The great state of Illinois passed “The Equitable Restrooms Act with vote being unanimous in the Senate and 109-5 in the House. It was signed by Gov. J. B. Pritzker on July 29, 2019, which caused the Chicago Public Schools to announce on Twitter that “all restrooms have been made mixed-sex to be “more inclusive” of students and staff who wish to use “facilities that align with their gender identity. www.womanarehuman.com/all-chicago-public-school-restrooms-now-mixed-sex/
This is affecting Arizona, California, New York, the UK, etc. The Communist Party of the USA, notes that “the forcible sex segregation of bathrooms is the newest struggle for transgender rights and gender expression.” in their diatribe under www.cpusa.org/article/the-trans-equality-struggle. The Socialist Party of The UK has my favorite Headline “ Tories Tout Toilet Tensions” (see www.socialistparty.org.uk)
There are a half dozen more articles on this issue, but many high school students are transitioning, which leads me to the last topic;
Aetna Medical in their Requirements for Genital Reconstructive Surgery lists numerous criteria, prime of which is a person being 18 years or older. They, and other Pennsylvania medical providers, generally agree on this, though also saying they review on a “case-by-case basis” . So why are there so many Transitioning High School students? My leftist paranoia brings up the phrase “medical-industrial complex”, with all the attendent industries that feed off of Transexuals.
Three questions, then:
One must be 18 to vote in Pa. and 18 to enlist (17 with parental consent), but younger to change your gender?
Why are there so many more transitioning teenagers in 2021 then ever before ?
Is this a positive or negative development?
Medical-Industrial Complex Makes Finding Right Door A Problem
As with many immigration-related matters, too much information is purposely hidden from public view.
We just witnessed an excellent example of the Biden administration’s immigration subterfuge. The must-pass continuing resolution bill to fund the federal government at its current level, and therefore avoid a government shutdown, included a completely unrelated $7 billion to help resettle evacuated Afghan nationals, mostly unvetted or, at best, superficially screened. The breakout of how the $7 billion will be spent was kept secret from the public – the very people that provide the money. As former Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen said, perhaps apocryphally, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon, you’re talking real money.”
Americans know as confirmed fact that the arriving Afghans are unvetted because Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, contradicting his earlier claim, sheepishly admitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had no idea how many evacuees had been vetted. Pressed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mayorkas confessed: “We are not conducting in-person, full refugee interviews of 100 percent” of Afghan evacuees.” Moreover, Mayorkas couldn’t provide Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) with specific data for how many Afghans went through full interviews. Mayorkas’ testimony exposes White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s deceptive statement assuring that “no one” has entered the U.S. without “a thorough screening and background check process.”
The federal government’s failure to properly protect Americans through the sensible requirement to vet foreign nationals from a country that is an avowed U.S. enemy has already, just weeks after the Afghan evacuation, had serious consequences. In September in New Mexico, the FBI began an investigation into a small group of male Afghans who, temporarily housed at the Doña Ana Complex, allegedly sexually assaulted a female U.S. soldier. Also in September, at Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin, two evacuees were charged, separately, with the alleged sexual assault of a minor using force, and spousal assault by strangulation and suffocation.
The individuals identified in these crimes hardly sound like they belong as part of “Operation Allies Welcome,” most of whom arrived on the six-week long airlift known as “Operation Allies Refuge” that moved 124,000 individuals out of Afghanistan, placing them around the country. Some of their destinations will be in areas that are struggling to recover from the pandemic, and have other long-standing societal woes engrained in their fabric before the evacuees’ arrival.
State Department data for the Afghan Placement and Assistance program obtained by the Associated Pressed showed that California is expected to accept more Afghan evacuees than any state, 5,200. Three months ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s legislative leaders requested $16.7 million in taxpayer funding to help resettle refugees. Contradictorily, the State Department promised to resettle Afghans in states with affordable housing. Yet California’s officials have for years bemoaned the shortage of that exact commodity. California is also plagued by high average gas prices, $4.68, and above-average state and local taxes at 10.9 percent of adjusted personal income. California’s income inequality level is among the five worst states, and the state’s K-12 public school system struggles with overcrowded classrooms that hamper teachers’ ability to effectively educate their students. For Afghans starting a new life in California, they’ll face many obstacles before they can hope to get on their feet.
For Americans keeping score on the dollar cost of the Afghanistan resettlement, here’s a partial tally. The 20-year war cost $2.3 trillion, with the estimated interest payments on that sum coming in at $925 billion. By 2030, estimated interest costs will ratchet up to $2 trillion, and by 2050, $6.5 trillion. Military equipment worth billions more dollars was abandoned during the hasty and incompetent U.S. retreat from Afghanistan. Those are painfully high sums. But no dollar amount can be attached to the loss of 2,400 American lives, the lives of 3,800 U.S. contractors and the thousands left behind to face an uncertain and possibly deadly future.
Now Americans will be required to finance Afghan evacuees’ U.S. resettlement, the $7 billion in the continuing resolution, plus mounting federal, state and local costs. The Center for Immigration Studies estimatedthat in their first five years of U.S. residency, each Middle Eastern refugee costs taxpayers $64,370, or 12 times what the U.N. estimates would be the cost to care for one refugee in a country close to his home. Regional resettlement never occurred to the Biden administration. There’s no reason it should when it has U.S. taxpayers to rely on.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
At The Wall Street Journal’s annual Chief Executive Officers’ council, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man whose net worth is an estimated $290 billion, sounded an alarm. If people don’t start procreating at an accelerated level, civilization will crumble, Musk trumpeted.
Musk worries about what he identified as the “low birth rate and the rapidly declining birth rate” which he attributes to COVID-19 and economic apprehension among the young. Elites, of which Musk is a ranking member, have promoted the “we need more people” meme for decades. Consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, developers, the ethnic identity lobby and Congress are united in their urgent pleas for more people. Domestically, cars can’t be sold, soda pop can’t be consumed, houses can’t be built, cheap labor can’t be hired and new voters can’t be created as long as potential buyers remain in Mexico, the Northern Triangle, Asia and the Caribbean. Immigrants’ search for a better life means that they come to the U.S. to become consumers, a mostly glossed-over fact in the immigration debate.
Musk’s concern was sparked by a Division of Vital Statistics report which found that the U.S. birth rate fell by 4 percent from 2019 to 2020, the sharpest single-year decline in nearly 50 years and the lowest number of births since 1979. But if Musk looked at the macro population picture, he could relax. Since 1979, an isolated point in time, the U.S. has boomed from 227 million to 334 million, a 107 million population explosion that historically high in-migration helped create. And more people are on the way. By 2050, the Census Bureau estimates that U.S. population will hit, assuming the low net migration projection,423 million. A further point of interest for globalist Musk to ponder is that, by 2100, the world’s population will be closing in on 11 billion people, a 3 billion increase during the next 80 years.
Furthermore, if Musk is worried about stagnant population, he should take a trip to the U.S. Southwest border. Musk won’t need his SpaceX rocket to travel to Del Rio, Texas. The illegal immigrant border surge, more than 2 million and counting, exceeds the total population of these states, individually: Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, North or South Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and Delaware. Neither President Joe Biden nor Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have given any indication that they will implement measures to control or stop the surge – good news for Musk and other “we need more people” advocates. Remember that the illegal alien totals, whatever they ultimately may be, are preliminary vis-à-vis the eventual totalities they represent. Princeton University estimated that the average immigrant petitions 3.1 family members, and many will begin new families, migration multipliersthat should delight Musk.
In November, the Center for Immigration Studies published a report which found that between September 2020 and September 2021, the foreign-born population, as defined by legal and illegal immigrants, increased by 1.6 million, attributable in part to the Biden’s nonenforcement border policy. The total foreign-born population in the U.S. as of September 2021 is 45.4 million.
The goal of growing the population, either through more natural births or immigration, is inconsistent with Americans’ views on how they want to live, and what kind of world they aspire to for their families. To lecture middle-class Americans, the elitists’ audience, about how many children they should bring into the world is the apex of arrogance, and compelling, indisputable proof that they have completely lost touch with the mainstream, most of whom are struggling in a hyper-inflationary era to meet their monthly obligations. Paying his bills isn’t a problem for Musk. His $269 billion net worth leaves him, his six children and future Musk generations worry-free when it comes to finances.
Polling consistently shows that Americans want less immigration. They also want government to enact sustainable immigration policy that enhances their lives, policies that the Biden administration has summarily rejected. A Harvard CAPS-Harris poll taken in late June had findings consistent with other recent polling: voters reject Biden’s open borders and long for the enforcement that President Trump’s administration implemented.
The question that population stabilization activists want Musk to answer is: Can we fairly and compassionately accommodate the arriving millions, let alone the millions more he wants to welcome, when the nation’s natural and fiscal resources are already over-taxed? Maybe Musk’s aerospace company will indeed find a way to colonize Mars and ease Earth’s population burden. In the unlikely event that might occur, it will be decades or possibly centuries away. The overpopulation challenge in the U.S. is immediate, and adding more people would exacerbate the existing, very real and growing problem.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Millions of animals die on U.S. roads every year. Reductions in night-time driving would stem future senseless loss of wildlife.
While data is difficult to come by for the number of animals killed on the 4.17 million miles of roads in the U.S., author and nature photographer Mark Mathew Braunstein wrote that an estimated 1 million animals are killed on U.S. roads each day. After a recent road trip in the Midwest, I wondered if the estimate of 1 million daily deaths isn’t too small a number. On a 700-mile round-trip between Oklahoma City and Kansas City in late October, I counted 178 animal victims of vehicular hits, with the body count higher as I got nearer to KC. The landscape of pumping units, hay bales, windmills and fall foliage was diminished by so much death. As the miles ticked by, emotions were up and down, sadness seeing what looked like more remains of yet another dead animal, but then relief to see just more shredded tires from blowouts, an abandoned child’s stuffed animal bunny toy or other detritus. Sometimes there were lone victims; sometimes pairs or threesomes – a calico cat, maybe a dog, skunks, raccoons, armadillos, eight deer, unknown species in pieces spread across multiple car lengths and animals no longer identifiable. With miles and miles of unbreaking cement divider separating the lanes for drivers heading north on I-35 from those heading south, there’s been no thought of how the chicken will cross the road, let alone “Why did the chicken cross the road?” But even if that solid concrete impediment weren’t there with four lanes of traffic – more in other parts of the country – and with vehicles traveling 75 mph (or 85 or 90 mph), the likelihood of successful animal crossings no doubt would probably still be low. About 100 cougars are killed each year on California’s roadways, some of the busiest in the world.
This carnage on the roads contributes not just to reductions in wildlife because of our actions, it impacts humans. The hundreds of thousands of animal fatalities without end on the roads result in 26,000 human injuries and 200 deaths, and vehicular damage. Crashes with animals translate to annual costs of $8 billion. With an estimated U.S. population of more than 30 million deer (an example perhaps not so much of diminishing wildlife, but of human mismanagement by killing off top predators, such as the cougar), there are ample opportunities for the unfortunate intersection of particularly lethal incidents between deer and moving vehicles. Just in Pennsylvania, the state synonymous with deer – think the 1978 film, “The Deer Hunter” – nearly 142,000 deer were struck by vehicles in reported claims to insurers. So the number could be higher.
Senseless death coupled with practical costs are ample reasons to look at how to significantly reduce losses. One way would be to stop driving at night. Nearly half of passenger vehicle occupant fatalities happen at night (6pm to 6am), a rate that is three times higher than daytime fatalities, according to a 2007 report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. About 25 percent of driving is during darkness, and speeding was a factor in 37 percent of night crashes. Driving at night is just more dangerous, the National Safety Council tells us.
In addition to reducing or eliminating night driving, because it’s safer for humans, with so many nocturnal animals, it’s good for them too. Let’s give them back the night!
That might not be a difficult choice for many. For the trucking industry, however, likely that would send shockwaves, certainly if there were any movement towards nonvoluntary participation. Nearly 4 million drivers – owner-operator truckers – hold commercial driver’s licenses, and they are the ones responsible for delivering 70 percent of all freight in the country. Delivery schedules, driving preferences and traffic are factors of when they drive. Cities with high traffic are just easier to navigate when there are fewer vehicles on the roads, which generally will be early morning hours. Current backlog issues at U.S. ports have only exacerbated driving schedules for truckers.
Just in the U.S., the chances of keeping a portion of the 290 million carsoff the roads at night to save lives would seem remote, seen as overreach to our freedom. It would take a mighty re-education campaign, which likely would still result in refusal by probably half of the population based on past and current polarization on other issues. Yet, it is a real option should enough Americans deem it more important to save millions of lives than to have unfettered access to roads at night.
Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and from time to time other topics that confound her. Contact her on FB @BetheChangeforAnimals.
There has been a great deal of controversy about a proposed Condo Development at 110 Park Ave. which would house 36 Units and be five floors (plus parking garage) and is being proposed by long-time Swarthmoreans Bill Cumby, Jr. and Don Delson. The Condos would go for a modest $700,000. There has been a lot of opposition because two stores there, HOM and Gallery on Park would be evicted, the small town look of Swarthmore would be blown up, along with other disruptions.
For a long time, it’s been evident to me, and others, that the concept of Swathmore is outdated and needs to be blown up. Why should we live in a town whose archaic name, and many of it’s street names, such as Chester, harken back to England, a country that still has a Monarchy!
No, it’s well past time to end this madness, both actually and conceptually. This new Condo is but the first salvo in a long needed reset, both physically and spiritually.
In honor of the re-founding fathers, we must change the name to Delsonville (I already have the t-shirt concession) in honor of one of the old Turks who is doing this, not for money or prestige, but because he sees the need, the want.
Now the College can continue to call itself Swarthmore. It won’t bother us, we won’t bother it. Septa can do what it will. It is of no matter.
This new Delsonville won’t require “cutesyî boutique stores, everything being Amazon now. Nor will we need food stores, as again this will be pick-up or delivery. New beer and wine and more stores, are sketched in, as part of the upcoming Quaker Casino(s).
Who will live here, you ask? Only those who can afford to, which, one is assured, will eliminate any remaining criminal element. We can advertise five minutes from Philly, which will be correct once the bullet trains are in place. A perfect place for the new breed of Professionals, etc.
What of the people now forced to move, you say? Well, they will be setting off on new adventures and we wish them well. They had become too dependent on an affordable Swarthmore, and need to retool and relearn. And pack their bags in the morning,
Tomorrowland is here today. And we call it Delsonville.
Washington, D.C.’s political class is focused on West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and which way he’ll vote on Build Back Better. Manchin, who in the past has hinted that he’s on the verge of caucusing with the GOP, might be in a bind. Although he’s not up for re-election until 2024, and the sitting Senator is dodging questions about whether he’ll defend his seat, Manchin is a career Democrat who will be campaigning in a state that President Donald Trump won by nearly 30 points.
Manchin has two years of breathing room, but three other swing-state Democratic senators aren’t as lucky, and will face voters in 2022. During a period of acute inflation, how constituents will feel if their senators vote in favor of adding nearly $3 trillion to the federal debt total, the estimate that two independent analysts made in early December, and granting amnesty to 6.5 million illegal immigrants will be pivotal.
In left-leaning New Hampshire, the “Live Free or Die” state, Sen. Maggie Hassan has a disastrous 33 percent approval rate, precariously low since in 2016 she displaced Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte by a razor-thin 1,017 ballots. Hassan’s fate could depend on how effectively her as-yet-unknown opponent makes the case against her. Polling indicates that whoever Hassan’s challenger is, possibly Ayotte now that GOP Gov. Chris Sununu announced he won’t enter the race, will be well-positioned to defeat her. Hassan will have to defend the Biden administration’s failure in Afghanistan, especially since evacuees are, controversially to many Granite State residents, being resettled in New Hampshire.
Two purple state U.S. senators may face longer re-election odds than Hassan. In the first of the two, Georgia’s vulnerable Raphael Warnock is a prime GOP target. Warnock scored a special election win over Kelly Loeffler, Gov. Brian Kemp’s appointee after Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson retired in 2019. The Democrats’ hold on the Peach State is tenuous, at best. President Donald Trump carried Georgia in 2016 and in 2020, and Georgia had been reliably Republican until 2020. Warnock’s probable opponent is former University of Georgia Bulldog and Dallas Cowboys running back Herschel Walker. In the latest poll, the football hero and immensely popular Walker leads Warnock by five points, 46-41.
The steepest uphill climb to survive the 2022 mid-terms may be in Arizona where another Democratic special election winner, Mark Kelly, will most certainly be pressed to defend Biden’s wide-open border policy. Arizona has been the state most adversely effected by the refusal of Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to enforce immigration laws. The Yuma Sector border crisis now dwarfs the more widely publicized Del Rio Sector immigration catastrophe. Yuma’s illegal immigrant border surge is 2,400 percent higher than last year, a direct result of Biden’s indifference to enforcement. Sector Chief Patrol Agent Chris T. Clem has been using social media to get the word out about the devastation in Arizona. In early October, agents captured a convicted child rapist. And as recently as late September, agents were encountering 1,000 illegal immigrants a day during the week.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey said that “Arizona is a border state. We faced this [illegal immigrant surges] before, but we’ve never faced a crisis this large in 21 years.” Ducey may be understating Arizona’s problem. During the last fiscal year, illegal immigrants whose aggregate number is nearly equal to Yuma’s total population have unlawfully crossed the border. Kelly’s most likely challengers include Attorney General Mark Brnovich who, with attorneys general from Ohio and Montana, has filed suit against the Biden administration over its immigration policy.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell hopes that one of the four – Manchin, Hassen, Warnock or Kelly – will defy Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and instead respect their constituents’ wishes, vote against BBB and thereby limit debt, deny rewarding illegal immigrants with a path to citizenship, and protect their political futures. Optimists hope that a BBB vote will be called before the winter recess; more realistically, negotiations over the bill’s land mines will drag into next year.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
During World War II, after the death and destruction from the December 7 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the highest-level baseball was played on Hawaii, and reached its apex during the 1944 Army-Navy Pineapple World Series. To provide as much entertainment as possible and to boost morale for their fellow servicemen and the Hawaiian community, the teams agreed in advance to play all seven games even if the series’ outcome had been decided earlier. An additional four games were later added, making the series an 11-tilt affair.
In 1944, the Army and Navy squads had more than 60 players who were either on or would be on major league rosters; by 1945, the total grew to 150. Eventual Hall of Famers on the Army and Navy teams included Pee Wee Reese, Phil Rizzuto, Hank Greenberg, Johnny Mize, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial and Ted Williams. Pittsburgh Pirates’ seven-time home run leader Ralph Kiner’s baseball playing time was limited. Kiner’s duties piloting a PBM patrol bomber flying boat for 1,200 hours out of Naval Station Kaneohe kept him off the diamond.
Patriotism motivated some players like Kiner and Greenberg. DiMaggio, however, intensely resented the war. In his book, “Joe DiMaggio, a Biography,” author David Jones wrote that although the great Yankee Clipper never came within a thousand miles of a battlefield, the war robbed him of his prime baseball years. When he first donned his Army uniform, DiMaggio was a 28-year-old superstar. Discharged three years later, DiMaggio was 31, underweight, malnourished, divorced and bitter. His three lost World War II years robbed DiMaggio of peak earnings and a chance to add to his already HOF statistics.
As Gary Bedingfield chronicled in his wonderful book, “Baseball in Hawaii during World War II,” for both native Hawaiians and American service men, baseball was a way of life. In the New York Mirror, sports reporter Bob Considine wrote: “There’s probably more sports played here per capita than anywhere on the mainland.” Considine commented on the “bewildering number of leagues ranging through sandlot, schools, industrials, semi-pro, racial, etc.” The Hawaii League, which dated back to 1920, included teams like the All-Chinese, the Asahi Rising Suns, and the All-Haole or Caucasian Wanderers. Plantation baseball was intensely competitive with pineapple, sugar cane and coconut growers fielding teams, and giving players days off to prepare. Winning could result in celebratory days off, but bosses viewed losing as an intolerable embarrassment.
The Pineapple World Series was the logical culmination of a Hawaii passionate about baseball, an abundance of available top-flight players, and the historic Army-Navy rivalry that dates back to the two academies’ football game first played in 1890.
On September 22, 1944, at historic Furlong Field with its wooden bleachers and swaying palm trees, 20,000 fans and thousands more listening over Armed Forces Radio waited with anticipation as the Detroit Tigers’ Virgil “Fire” Trucks took the mound for Navy. Williams had named Trucks as one of the five pitchers he most hated to bat against. The others: Eddie Lopat, Bob Feller, Bob Lemon and Purple Heart winner Hoyt Wilhelm. Trucks pitched a 4-hit, complete game shutout, 5-0, and gave Navy a 1-0, series lead. Navy reeled off five more consecutive wins, and took a commanding 6-0 Series lead. Once 11 games were in the history book, Navy had dominated, 9-2-1. The Navy standouts were Rizzuto, .387; Reese, .350, and Mize, .450. Trucks later recalled that the Army was initially thought to be the superior team. But Admiral Chester Nimitz recruited Navy superstars from the mainland, and those players provided the sailors with the winning edge.
When peace at last came to Hawaii, baseball continued to thrive; military leagues survived into the mid-1970s. The Lopat All-Stars arrived in 1946, and the Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals played exhibition games that thrilled locals. The Pacific Coast League Sacramento Solons, transferred to Hawaii, became the Hawaii Islanders, and enjoyed huge popularity for their 18 seasons even though they played their home games at the dilapidated but lovingly named the “Termite Palace.” Found to be “severely termite-damaged” and unsafe, the Stadium closed after the 1973 Hula Bowl game.
Although the circumstances under which World War II baseball was played were tragic – more than a million Americans killed, wounded or captured – the entertainment value it provided the soldiers, the players and fans provided ongoing comfort during a period of deep trial and tribulation.
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.
