Cagle World

Even though the nation is divided about immigration and its consequences, on one point, unanimity must be reached.

Immigration, whether legal or illegal, cannot be a vehicle for child labor. And yet, the Department of Labor has uncovered several incidents that involve under-age migrants working in slave labor-like conditions.

In a series of stories, NBC News provided the horrific details. PSSI, a company contracted to work at slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities throughout the county, allegedly employed at least 31 kids – one as young as 13 – to work overnight cleaning shifts at three facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota, a Fair Labor Standards Act violation. Additional evidence indicated that the company may also have employed more under-age children in similar perilous conditions at 400 other sites nationwide. Identity theft is rampant and a major facilitator in underage migrant employment.

PSSI is a huge company that employs about 17,000 and has contracts with hundreds of meatpacking facilities. Toiling at PSSI wasn’t an after-school job at the soda parlor. During the graveyard shift and across three slaughter houses, when they should have been home in bed, minors literally slaved away, mopping up bloody floors.

Interviews with the minors, in their native Spanish language, revealed that several children began their slaughterhouse shifts at 11 p.m. and worked until dawn, some for six or seven days a week, and often for periods of up to 15 months. At least three victims suffered chemical burns.

The NBC News story skirted the central factor that abets minor children’s criminal employment – President Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ open border. Don’t be misled. The media’s deceptive language about “unaccompanied minors” is intended to deflect the truth – the children are more accurately described as the victims of child smuggling rings and are tied into the Biden administration’s open borders policy. As the minors mature into adulthood, they become embedded in the permanent labor force.

To most of them, any job is a good job. They need incomes to send remittances back home and to pay off their smuggling fees.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics show that after President Biden took office in January 2021, he acted immediately to eliminate effective policies, including categorically exempting unaccompanied minors from Title 42. As a result,  encounters skyrocketed. Between 2020 and 2021, total unaccompanied minor encounters at the Southwest border increased a staggering 342 percent, from 33,239 to 146,913. Those encounters increased to 152,057 in 2022 and are on pace to be at a similar level in 2023.

At a recent Senate hearing, Secretary Mayorkas couldn’t explain the child exploitation surge under his watch, a fact that the New York Times described as “ignored or missed.” Multiple veteran government staffers and outside contractors told the Health and Human Services Department, including in reports which reached Secretary Xavier Becerra, that children could be at risk. Critics had previously brought to Mayorkas’ attention that the DHS Office of Refugee Resettlement routinely releases minors into the custody of unvetted families, many of whom are illegally present, and likely also illegally employed.

The Labor Department also issued news releases that noted an increase in child labor. Senior White House aides were shown proof of exploitation, like migrants working with heavy industrial equipment and caustic chemicals. The net result of multiple efforts to shine light on booming child exploitation: nothing.

Multiple felonies are committed on every step of the journey from the border to the slaughterhouse. Corrupt government and private sector employers hold the upper hand. Fines are meaningless. Hard jail time might make a difference. But if Congress can’t pass mandatory E-Verify, it’s unlikely to put its weight behind throwing the donor class behind bars.

–

Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

In 1994, a year before his death from alcohol-induced cirrhosis, hepatitis C and inoperable liver cancer, Mickey Mantle gave a remorseful interview to Sports Illustrated.

The New York Yankees superstar center fielder and first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee recounted his life as an alcoholic with brutal candor. Mantle admitted that because of alcohol abuse, he ended up “killing himself.”

Except to other alcoholics, Mantle’s confession about how drinking kept him from living a more fulfilling life and ruptured his relationships with friends and family. Mantle began some of his mornings with what he called the “breakfast of champions,” a big glass filled with a shot or more of brandy, some Kahlúa and cream.

Yankees’ second baseman Billy Martin, a regular drinking partner, and Mantle would stop at Mickey’s Central Park South restaurant where the bartender blended the ingredients and served them up. As Mickey remembered, the frozen drinks “tasted real good.”

Mantle’s “breakfast of champions” was the first of many drinks he threw back each day. Inevitably, Mickey’s heavy drinking led to long blackout periods. By his own admission, Mantle would forget what day it was, what city he was in and about his commitments to appear at baseball card signing shows, although he eventually showed up.

The best man at Martin’s 1988 wedding, Mantle “hardly remember(ed) being there.” One year later, Mantle served as a pallbearer at Martin’s funeral. Billy had been killed in a single vehicle automobile accident on Christmas Day. Although there is some dispute about whether Martin or his friend Bill Reedy drove, no one questions that the pair had been drinking heavily in the hours before the fatal crash.

After Mantle retired, his drinking became, in his words, “really bad.” He went through a deep depression. Teammates Billy, Whitey Ford, Hank Bauer and Moose Skowron were part of his past life, and leaving those guys “left a hole in me.” Mantle tried to fill up his baseball emptiness with nonstop alcohol intake.

The older Mantle got, the more he drank. Family and friends begged Mantle to get help. But Mantle stubbornly refused. Like too many alcoholics, Mantle foolishly convinced himself that he could stop whenever he wanted. But at a charity golf outing for the Harbor Club Children’s Christmas Fund near Atlanta, Mantle hit bottom. He drank Bloody Marys in the morning, and then downed two bottles of wine in the afternoon. At the card show that evening, Mantle embarrassed himself with his obnoxious, drunken behavior. In his alcohol-fueled stupors, Mantle often berated autograph seekers, a shock to his fans who cherished his image as a homey, blond-hair, crewcut Oklahoma kid.

Atlanta was an overdue awakening for Mantle. Finally seeking guidance, Mantle approached his son Danny who had been treated at the Betty Ford Center. Three of Mantle’s four sons and his wife Merlyn were also alcoholics. While Mantle deliberated about checking into the Betty Ford Center, his doctor gave him his MRI results: Mickey needed a liver transplant.

Once at Betty Ford, Mantle confronted his uncomfortable truth. Mantle admitted that, as he told Sports Illustrated, “he really screwed up,” was a lousy family man, and preferred running around with his baseball buddies. Envisioning his life as a sober, responsible Mantle, Mickey had big plans, but did not live long enough to realize them to the fullest. His goal was to stay sober, be strong and make amends. At his final press conference, Mantle said to an audience aghast at his wasted-away body: “This is a role model: Don’t be like me.”

Today, Mantle is remembered mostly for his brilliant baseball achievements: 20 All-Star games, three AL MVP awards including one in his 1956 Triple Crown season, seven World Series championship rings, four AL Home Run crowns, and a first ballot Hall of Fame inductee.

But for the millions of Americans suffering from alcoholism, Mantle’s ability to overcome – although too late to save his life – is a bigger triumph than any of his baseball feats.

For more information, go to the National Alcohol Awareness Month website: Nationaltoday.com/national-alcohol-awareness-month

–

Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

President Trump’s formal accusation, and whatever the fallout from it may be, must not distract from the ongoing, White House-sanctioned open border catastrophe.

Down on the Southwest border, March marked the 26th consecutive month since President Biden’s inauguration that bedlam reigned. Up at the Northern border, migrant activity is on the rise. And back in Washington, D.C., Congress held border-related hearings that were acrimonious, but ultimately, unproductive.

March’s migrant apprehensions increased 25 percent to 161,000, up from February’s 129,000. January also saw fewer than 129,000 apprehensions. The short-term, two-month decrease was not what it seemed, however, as the lower totals were the result of a questionable (if not illegal) program that allows 30,000 Haitian, Venezuelan, Cuban and Nicaraguan migrants monthly to apply from their home countries. To avert the bad optics that thousands of gathered migrants crowding at the border presented to the public, the Biden administration took advantage of an app from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to process applications from abroad.

While the border surge has been a constant, many changes over the last 100 weeks have deepened the crisis. Chinese illegal immigrants are crossing into the U.S. in record numbers now. Customs and Border Protection reported that fewer than 2,000 Chinese nationals crossed the border in FY 2022, but federal data showed the first few months of FY 2023 have seen more than twice that amount – 4,300 encounters.

The doubling of encounters hasn’t gotten the White House’s attention, neither did a Chinese spy balloon that gathered sensitive intelligence nor the massive increase in the Chinese acquisition of U.S. land.

But Oklahoma Sen. James Langford has introduced a bill, the Security and Oversight of International Landholdings Act, to limit foreign entities from gobbling up prime U.S. agricultural land. Langford said that more than a million acres of Oklahoma farmland are owned by foreign nations, including China, and the land is used for farming illegal drugs.

“Just in the last year, China has doubled the number of acres that it has in the U.S.,” said Lankford, adding, “They’re buying up hundreds of thousands of acres across the country, and they’re moving criminal operations into the country.”

Migrants, mostly from Mexico, are also using Canada to travel south, into the U.S. Mexican consular officials said that to avoid the crowded Southern border, its nationals often fly from Mexico to Canada, and then walk south to seek asylum in the U.S. Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia, who leads the sector responsible for parts of northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire, said that in one five-month period his agents apprehended more people crossing into the U.S. from Canada than in the last three fiscal years combined.

In an attempt to create order out of chaos, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a March 28 hearing with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas its focus. The hearing produced the predictable hostile exchanges. Sen. Ted Crux asked pointed yes or no questions about the open border’s consequences as measured by migrant deaths and threats to domestic public safety; Mayorkas refused to answer. Cruz exposed one little-known fact: migrants wear color-coded wristbands that correspond to the amount of money owed to the cartels who trafficked them. Mayorkas claimed to have no knowledge of the wristbands.

Cruz, hoping to provide deterrents, introduced the WALL Act to fully fund the southern border wall, and the EL CHAPO Act, which would use money forfeited to the U.S. government as a result of the criminal prosecution of Mexican drug lord “El Chapo” and other drug kingpins.

Unlike the drama that surrounds President Trump’s trials and tribulations, open borders and illegal immigration affect every aspect of Americans’ lives. A recent analysis found that at the start of 2023, illegal immigration’s net cost to taxpayers at the federal, state and local levels is at least $150.7 billion, money that could otherwise be spent on salaries for police officers and teachers, or badly needed infrastructure repairs.

Given his choice between encouraging migration or promoting safer cities, more well-educated children and safer roads, Biden has, to the disappointment and detriment of millions of Americans citizens, consistently favored funding illegal immigration.

–

Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Regardless of how bitter the immigration argument – and the debate routinely sinks to new hostility lows – everyone should agree that open borders must not be allowed to disrupt public education.

If an individual’s station in life prevents him from enrolling his children in private schools, then a solid public education is essential. Without proper education in the basics, the nation’s children will have a long climb toward success in adulthood.

No one can argue persuasively that the border surge, which includes hundreds of thousands of K-12 age youths, will do anything except further drag down the nation’s failing public school system. Everything in America’s public schools reflects crisis mode.

For public schools, the trend is headed in the wrong direction. Enrollment is down and chronic absenteeism is up. Shortages abound – teachers, substitutes, bus drivers and maintenance personnel. School board meetings are battle zones that often require security to prevent fisticuffs. For 9-year-olds, math and reading test scores have plummeted to their lowest levels in decades. This is a key age for creating a strong academic foundation. Black and Hispanic students fell further behind white students. Reliance on mental health services has become more common. Violence, including shootings and sexual assaults against teachers, has escalated.

Into this chaotic cauldron, waves of migrant children have entered the U.S. from more than 100 nations, and they speak dozens of different languages and dialects in our K-12 schools. Some have never attended school, and others possess only a rudimentary understanding of how a classroom functions. Enrollments occur on a rolling basis throughout the school year. No matter how disruptive migrant enrollment is to the existing student body and to the teachers, the process is a constitutional imperative.

In June 1982, the Supreme Court issued Plyler v. Doe, a landmark decision which held states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education based on their illegal immigrant status. By a 5-4 vote, the Court ruled that any fiscal resources which could be saved by excluding illegal immigrant children from public schools were far outweighed by societal harms that might be created from denying an education to unlawfully present children.

The Supreme Court has ruled, but the teachers and school administrators are the ones who must somehow impart a quality education, despite the challenges that the migrants represent. And with teachers now coping with the ongoing enrollment of non-English speaking students, citizen children are at a disadvantage. When polled, a plurality of working-class, blue-collar Americans said that illegal immigration has made their local school systems worse off, a new study revealed.

A recent Rasmussen Reports survey showed that 40 percent of Americans who earn less than $30,000 felt that illegal immigration made their local schools less effective, while 41 percent of those who earned $30,000 to $50,000 reached the same conclusion.

Among working class, middle class and upper-middle class Americans, less than 10 percent say illegal immigration has made their local schools better, while 34 to 45 percent say there has not been much of an impact. In his House Judiciary Committee testimony earlier this year, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) stated the obvious: public schools packed with non-English speakers are a disadvantage to citizen children eager to learn and advance.

“What the Democrats have never explained is how our schools are made better by packing classrooms with non-English speaking students,” McClintock said.

Nationally, the English language learner student population will continue to grow rapidly, the predictable consequence of an open border. The projected number of school-age immigrant children increased from 12.3 million in 2005 to 17.9 million in 2020, a total which accounted for most of the school-age population growth during the period. Most of today’s immigrant children will require English language learner services.

During the 1950s, California’s public schools ranked among the nation’s best. But decades later after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, California drifted toward the bottom of the heap. One reason for the steep decline: California’s K-12 English language learner enrollment is 1.1 million students.

Attending to immigrant children’s special academic needs, including developing language skills, detracts from teacher time that would otherwise be allotted to citizen children.

After two years of remote instruction, children need every moment to catch up and shouldn’t be required to share valuable classroom time with illegal immigrants.

–

Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

In 1869, Hughie Jennings became the ninth of 12 children born into a Pittston, Pa., coal mining family.

At age 12, Jennings dropped out of school to work as a breaker boy in the mines near Scranton, Pa., where he picked slate from coal for 90 cents a day. Amid clouds of coal dust and the machinery’s rushing roar, breaker boys bent over backless wooden benches to perform their 10-hour-a-day tasks. A 1900 Bureau of Mines report found that colliery accidents killed 411, injured 1,057, and made 230 widows and 524 orphans.

But from those hardscrabble days, Jennings eventually entered the Baseball Hall of Fame based on his sterling career as a ball player and manager. The Irish-American also became an admired trial lawyer.

In his book “EE-YAH,” Society for American Baseball Research historian Jack Smiles tracked Jennings’ career all the way back to when he was a 90-pound catcher for hometown ball clubs like the Moosic Anthracites. In 1889 Hughie signed for $5 a game with a Lehighton, Pa., semi-pro team, and left the mines behind for good. Jennings always said that what most motivated him throughout his career was to play so skillfully that he’d never return to the pits.

Jennings’ first contract called for $50 monthly, a fortune compared to his miner wages. By 1894, Jennings landed with the old National League Baltimore Orioles, where he teamed up with Irish-American players still revered today. Under manager Ned Hanlon’s guidance, John J. McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, Joe Kelley, Dan Brouthers, Wilbert Robinson and Jennings – Hall of Famers all – the Orioles won three straight pennants. Jennings emerged as baseball’s top shortstop, both offensively and defensively.

During the Orioles’ championship years, Jennings had some of the best-ever seasons by a major league shortstop. To get on base, the fearless Jennings would do anything. His 1896 hit-by-pitch total, 51, is a still-standing major league record. The Orioles’ winning formula was old-fashioned, inside baseball – the bunt, the hit-and-run, the stolen base and the Baltimore chop. The Orioles cheated, too, like tripping opposing players as they rounded third and headed for home.

After a chaotic period where various teams bid for his services, during autumn 1899 Jennings attended the Cornell Law School in the off-season. Obtaining a law school diploma was a high enough priority that Jennings refused to report to the Brooklyn Superbas until June so he could complete his spring term.

In exchange for his tuition, Jennings coached the Cornell baseball team. Jennings fell two semesters short of graduating from Cornell, but he passed enough classes to take the bar exam, and was admitted to practice in Maryland and in Pennsylvania.

After a four-year stint piloting the Orioles, in 1907, Jennings took over the Detroit Tigers and young Ty Cobb. The Tigers won three straight pennants, but won only one World Series. The firebrand Cobb, however, blossomed. He won 12 batting titles in 13 years and set stolen base records. Jennings stayed with Detroit until 1920, and then took over the New York Giants for parts of 1924 and 1925 seasons.

Sportswriters called the firebrand Jennings “Ee-yah” for his third base coaching box antics, “Hustling Hughie” for his aggressive infield play and “Big Daddy,” not for his 5’8” stature, but because he served as a role model for the 100 other men who followed him from the Northeastern coal mines to the major leagues.

In the final three winters of his life, Jennings contracted tuberculosis and meningitis before, at age 58, passing away in 1928 at his Scranton home.

–

Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

Nefarious activities of a criminal organization that targeted Texans of Asian descent were exposed last month by The Dallas Morning News.

The Texas Department of Public Safety inadvertently shipped thousands of driver’s licenses to a New York-based group with felonious intent that has ties in other states.

Department of Public Safety Chief Steve McCraw explained how the identity theft scam worked. The criminal actors fraudulently obtained the licenses, credit card information and other personal data on the dark web. McCraw said that the criminals specifically targeted Asians of various backgrounds to find what he called potential “look-alikes” to match with Chinese nationals who have entered the country illegally. Once in possession of a Texas driver’s license, the illegal alien can exchange it for a license issued by the state in which he’s residing. At least 3,000 Texans have been affected, and an investigation is ongoing.

The black market for fake documents among Chinese and other illegal aliens who have crossed into the interior since President Biden’s inauguration is huge. A staggering number of Chinese migrants have illegally entered the U.S. during fiscal 2022’s last three months – a 700 percent increase when compared to the same prior year period. Customs and Border Protection data shows that illegal Chinese migrant encounters have increased each month since February 2021, and 2023 is on pace to surpass the total number caught in 2022’s entirety.

The border crisis is an opportunity for drug smugglers as well as human and sex traffickers. Much less reported, however, is identity theft, a crime that has directly harmed thousands more than the 3,000 targeted Texans. In 2022, during the fourth quarter alone, identity theft and related data breaches victimized 22 million Americans. For the third consecutive quarter, medical identity theft was most prevalent; 14.4 million consumers fell victims.

No one is safe. The password manager LastPass disclosed details about a number of hacks it suffered last year when source code and customer vault data were lifted, according to technology and culture publication The Verge. To date, identity theft has cost Americans $5.8 billion, and fraudulent incidents are up 70 percent since last year.

Despite the skyrocketing identity theft incidents – one every 22 seconds, and up from .3 million reports in 2001 to 5.7 million in 2021 – the federal government will not adopt a simple solution that would protect otherwise vulnerable consumers.

Maximum security could be provided in a two-step remedy. First, mandate E-Verify that would, with 99 percent assurance, guarantee that new hires are legally authorized to work in the U.S.; the remaining 1 percent is vulnerable to identity theft, according to an Office of the Inspector General report.

However, the Social Security Administration could close the loophole almost entirely if it would simply notify workers with more than one employer making contributions to their Social Security numbers, and ask them to report if they were not actually working for those employers. For reasons that it refuses to explain, the SSA has a policy of not informing identity theft victims. With 1.2 million “known gotaways” entering the general population over the past two years, identity theft is increasingly likely. Those who have escaped detection, and are therefore not paroled, will become increasingly desperate for jobs, and the fraudulently obtained permission to hold them.

Even though border enforcement and dissuading identity theft could both be easily done, protecting criminals and leaving citizens vulnerable, at the border and in the interior, is a Biden administration hallmark.

–

Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

U.S. presidents’ love affair with baseball dates back to George Washington, who wrote in his journal that during Valley Forge he “sometimes throws and catches a ball for hours with his aide-de-camp.”

Every president since Washington, except Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, had a passion for base ball, as Washington then referred to the game. Roosevelt thought baseball was a “mollycoddle game,” and Coolidge attended to appease his passionate-fan wife, Grace.

Abraham Lincoln, upon hearing in 1860 that he won the presidential nomination, allegedly responded, “They’ll have to wait a few minutes [for his formal acceptance] until I have another turn at bat.” In 1893, Herbert Hoover was Stanford University’s shortstop, and at age 88 called himself one of the sport’s “oldest fans.” In 1910, William Howard Taft became the first president to toss out the now-traditional first pitch.

Dwight Eisenhower played semi-pro baseball under the pseudonym “Wilson,” which, luckily for Ike, preserved his West Point scholarship. Richard Nixon was an avid fan, a players’ favorite and knowledgeable enough about baseball to be seriously considered as a potential MLB commissioner. George H. W. Bush, a 1948 Yale University graduate, was a standout Eli first baseman who played in the first College World Series and kept his well-oiled MacGregor mitt handy in his Oval Office’s desk drawer.

But after historians researched the baseball archives and read countless news accounts, the nearly unanimous consensus is that Woodrow Wilson, the former Princeton University president, New Jersey governor, and from 1913-1921, a two-term 28th president, was baseball’s biggest fan.

From an early age, baseball and its intricacies absorbed Wilson. As a child, Wilson sketched in his geometry notebook a hand-scribbled diagram of a baseball diamond, and labeled it “Base Ball Ground.” Wilson later played varsity center field for Davidson College and was Princeton’s assistant manager. Scouts said that Wilson was “a fine player,” but his teammates countered that the scholarly outfielder was often too caught up in his studies to show up for practice.

Author Curt Smith in “The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball & the White House” wrote that Wilson absorbed baseball more deeply than any White House occupant who preceded or succeeded him, an opinion that Washington Senators’ owner Clark Griffith, premier Senators’ first baseman Joe Judge and the peerless Ty Cobb all agreed with.

Griffith had been watching Senators’ Opening Days for nearly 30 years, more than enough time to make a sound evaluation. Judge concurred that “Wilson was by far the best fan. He knew a lot of us players and came out to the park often. He’d run his car right on the field and we’d put a player who wasn’t in the game at each corner of the car to watch for fly balls.”

Through a special arrangement between Wilson and Griffith, Wilson’s chauffeur would enter the stadium through an outfield gate where the then-ailing president could watch the game undisturbed. But Cobb paid Wilson the highest compliment when he called the president “the greatest American.”

In Wilson’s final years, the travails of World War I and a stroke had taken their toll on the former president, but he still found solace in baseball. Wilson invited his secretary Randolph Bolling to his Washington home’s basement, referred to as “the dugout,” where they reviewed the previous day’s box scores, and second guessed the losing managers.

At his life’s end, infirm from his stroke, plagued with constant migraines and painful dyspepsia, baseball provided Wilson with a few, rare calming moments. Wilson died in 1924, age 67, one year before his beloved Senators won the World Series.

–

Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

Don Zimmer had quite a baseball career.

During his 66-year career in professional baseball, the scrappy infielder shook Babe Ruth’s hand, posed for pictures with Clark Gable and Lana Turner, played with Brooklyn Dodgers’ Hall of Famers Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, managed the Boston Red Sox when Carlton Fisk hit his game-winning 12th inning World Series home run,  and coached the 1978 New York Yankees when Bucky Dent broke bean towners’ hearts with his game winning, American League East clinching four-bagger.

Zimmer also played and managed winter baseball in Japan, Cuba and Puerto Rico, where he managed Roberto Clemente and Willie Mays. In all, Zimmer played for six major league teams, managed four and coached 11. Except for a single Social Security check he cashed between gigs, Zimmer never earned a penny outside of baseball.

Despite Zimmer’s Hollywood experiences and baseball achievements, he was most proud of his 1951 home plate marriage to Carol Jean Bauerle before a night game in Elmira, New York, where, as a top Brooklyn Dodgers’ prospect, he had worked his way up to the Class A Pioneers.

Zimmer and Carol Jean, nicknamed “Soot” by her German grandmother, had been sweethearts since the 10th grade at Cincinnati’s Western Hills High School when the couple were on a girl-asks-boy hayride. A star quarterback, the basketball team’s starting guard and shortstop on the Ohio state championship baseball nine, Zimmer was the state’s most widely recognized high school athlete. As Soot recalled the hayride, “We were 16, and were together from then on.”

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

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

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

From 2004 to 2014, Zimmer worked for the Tampa Rays as a senior advisor, his last baseball job. On Opening Day 2014, Zimmer, wearing number 66 to honor his years spent in professional baseball, rode across the diamond in a golf cart, too weak to walk. Fans gave him a standing ovation.

Two months before their 63rd anniversary, Zimmer died from heart and kidney failure. But Soot had one more event to chronicle. A Rays’ representative called to tell Soot that the team would honor Zim on Opening Day 2015, hang his jersey from the Tropicana Field rafters and retire number 66.

Then age 84, Soot had a few empty pages in one of her volumes to add the latest Zim stories. “Good thing there’s still room in here,” Soot joked, “Too old to start a new scrapbook.”

Soot, now 92, treasures her memories of life with Zim, on and off the field.

–

Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

Utah’s Great Salt Lake could disappear within the next five years.

A Brigham Young University report found that as of January 2023, the lake is 19 feet below its average level. Since 1850, the Great Salt Lake has lost 73 percent of its water and more than half of its surface area.

BYU ecologist Benjamin Abbott, noting “unprecedented danger,” called for emergency measures to save the Great Salt Lake from further collapse. Abbott wrote that despite encouraging growth in legislative action and public awareness, “most Utahns do not realize the urgency of this crisis.”

At this point, and since 2020, the lake has lost more than 1 million acre-feet of water annually. Each acre foot represents about 360 gallons of water, nearly the size of a one-foot-deep football field. Today, only about 0.1 million acre-feet of water is returned to the lake each year.

Abbott pointed to worldwide examples which show that saline lake loss triggers a long-term cycle of environmental, health and economic suffering. He urges a coordinated rescue to stave off widespread air and water pollution, further losses from animals listed as part of the Endangered Species Act, and greater declines in agriculture, industry and overall quality of life.

If Utah Governor Spencer Cox hopes to deliver on his promise that the Great Salt Lake will not go dry on his watch, he’ll have to adopt some, if not all, of Abbott’s suggested measures, many of which will be unpopular among constituents. Specifically, the BYU scholars called on Coxto implement a watershed-wide emergency rescue plan that will set arequirement of at least 2.5 million acre-feet per year until the lake reaches its minimum healthy elevation of 4,198 feet.

In light of what the authors called an “all-hands-on-deck emergency,” the BYU analysis asked farmers, counties, cities, businesses, churches, universities and other organizations to “do everything in their power to reduce outdoor water use.” Utahns must, BYU counseled, adopt a “Lake First” approach to water preservation.

The Great Salt Lake’s rapidly dwindling water level is attributable to two factors: the ongoing drought that’s affected large swathes of the nation and an unprecedented population boom. Despite above average snowfall in 2022, most of Utah remains in severe to extreme drought mode.

The bigger culprit in the Great Salt Lake’s demise, however, is population growth. Between July 2021 and July 2022, Utah’s estimated population grew by more than 61,000, which marked the state’s largest spike in absolute growth since 2006, putting its total population at slightly more than 3.4 million residents. Of Utah’s 29 counties, 28 added population, except for Daggett, which declined by six people.

Utah’s population growth is calculated by the standard formula: net migration accounted for an estimated 38,141 more residents, while natural increase – births minus deaths – accounted for another 23,101 residents. From 2010 to 2020, Utah was the nation’s fastest growing state. Utah’s growth will continue unabated. By 2060, Utah’s population will hit 5.5 million with intervals of 4 million between 2032 and 2033 and 5 million between 2050 and 2051.

Put another way, in the next 40 years, Utah’s population will increase 66 percent.

By the time the 2030 Census rolls around, Utah will have more Venezuelan migrants admitted under President Biden’s immigration policies. Already in Utah in significant numbers, Venezuelans are part of Biden’s program to grant immigration parole every month to 30,000 total Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. For Venezuelans who have family ties and prospective sponsors in Utah, the state becomes a magnet. And once settled, the migrant Venezuelans will start families or expand their existing families, thereby putting more pressure on Utah’s natural resources.

The Great Salt Lake is one of many disappearing U.S. lakes and rivers, victimized by overpopulation and mismanagement. Others in grave danger of drying up include the Colorado and California’s Lake Mead and Lake Tahoe.

BYU’s environmentalists have rolled out a sound plan to save the Great Salt Lake. For its part, the federal government is irresponsibly adding population to states like Utah that are struggling to provide precious water and other resources for existing residents.

–

Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

A week after Joe Biden became president, he signed Executive Order 14008, which announced his commitment to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and water – 41.5 million acres per year – by 2030.

On May 6, 2021, the Department of the Interior published “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful,” a preliminary report about what’s become known as the “30 x 30” plan. Under the Department of Interior’s direction, in collaboration with the Agriculture and Commerce departments and consistent with Biden’s executive order, the report reaffirmed the mission to conserve within the next seven years at least 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters.

The order is tall, and time is short for the urgent undertaking.

As of 2023, the U.S. is going in the wrong direction if its intention is to preserve precious, irreplaceable natural resources. The growth and development mantra that the Chamber of Commerce, the media and most in Congress embrace have overwhelmed Americans who want to preserve what remains of the nation’s biodiversity.

The valiant battle against the powerful, wealthy, craven growth mongers is worth the fight. In the book, “Precious Heritage, the Status of Biodiversity in the U.S.,” the authors point out that the U.S. is, for species like salamanders and fresh water turtles, at the global center of ecological biodiversity.

From Appalachia’s lush forests to Alaska’s frozen tundra, and from the Midwest’s prairies to Hawaii’s subtropical rainforests, the U.S. harbors a stunning, unique ecosystem array. These ecosystems in turn sustain an incomparable variety of plant and animal life. Among the nation’s other extraordinary biological features are California’s coast redwoods, which are the world’s tallest trees, and Nevada’s Devils Hole pupfish, which survive in a single 10’ x 70’ desert pool, the smallest range of any vertebrate animal.

And yet, relentless growth continues. Between 2010 and 2020, the U.S. grew by about 20 million residents, about five times the population of Los Angeles. Today L.A. has 3.9 million people, and a density of 8,382 persons per square mile.

Since Biden’s  executive order, there have been few, if any, identifiable successes. A recently released Department of Interior preliminary report is best viewed as a guideline or a starting point two years into the venture. Details are few. Rather, the report repeats themes that have been bandied about for decades: “Pursue a collaborative and inclusive approach to conservation” and “conserve America’s lands and waters for the benefit of all people.”

No one argues with those objectives or the six other so-called “central recommendations.” But the progress report lacks the specifics of how to accomplish the lofty goals and ignores the harsh reality that, on its current course, U.S. population will continue ever upward.

As encouraging as the White House’s awareness and conservation activism is, Biden’s executive order makes not a single mention of immigration, the nation’s main population driver. And while discussions about immigration may be uncomfortable or even off the table for expansionists, no serious approach to conservation can exclude the controversial topic.

More than 1 million legal immigrants arrive annually, many beginning new families or expanding their existing families. Many eventually petition their relatives, the family reunification process that adds significantly to U.S. population growth. By 2030, the U.S. population is expected to reach about 350 million, up from today’s 334 million. By 2060, the Census Bureau predicts that population will hover around 400 million, more than 15 million more per decade, and a 20 percent spike from 2023. These figures were calculated pre-Southwest Border surge.

The obvious consequence is more development. More roads, hospitals, schools, stores and places of worship must be built. With that, green spaces and open spaces are destroyed to make room for the inevitable sprawl that building creates. The establishment wants more immigration because more new residents mean more consumers. Despite elitists demands, at a minimum immigration must be slowed. Reduced immigration levels – fewer people – would help the White House Council on Environmental Quality move toward its conservation goal. Ignore immigration as a variable in population growth, and sprawl and environmental degradation will continue unabated.

In 2001, Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day founder, called out faux environmentalists. Under that would fit today’s Biden administration’s interior, agriculture and commerce departments’ officials. Nelson spoke words as true today as they were two decades ago: “…it’s phony to say ‘I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration.’”

–

Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].