Cagle World

Overpopulation’s negative consequences are well-known to the nation’s environmentalists.

Too many people lead to overdevelopment and put America’s already jeopardized resources, such as water, wetlands and wildlife, at further risk. International researchers have concluded that too many people also creates a level of noise pollution that brings with it serious health problems.

In today’s chaotic world, conditions are getting noisier and noisier out there. Noise of all kinds make life less pleasant for Americans seeking peace and quiet. In some cases, the reaction is to grin and bear it.

A few years ago, a food columnist wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece suggesting that diners who patronize popular bistros should consider taking miniature bull horns with them so they could communicate with their partners. Upon a second reading, however, perhaps the reporter wasn’t kidding. Everyone has experienced the occasional need to yell across the table to be heard. Reviewers tabulated that an average restaurant’s sound intensity level of 80 dBAs, or decibels, is about the same as a garbage disposal, while the conversation level of typical diners peaks at about 60 dBAs.

In the scheme of today’s problems, restaurant noise pollution is minor. People can always eat at home. But noise pollution’s far-ranging effects are destructive to humans, marine species, flying creatures and the overall environment.

The World Health Organization’s report titled “Burden of Disease from Environmental Noise” sounded a grave alarm after it collated data from various large-scale epidemiological studies of environmental noise in Western Europe that it collected over a 10-year period. WHO’s study analyzed environmental noise from planes, trains and vehicles, and other urban sources. Then, WHO looked at the linkage between noise and health maladies like cardiovascular disease, sleep disturbance, tinnitus, children’s cognitive impairment, and overall annoyance or short temper. Finally, the WHO team calculated the disability-adjusted life-years or DALYs – basically the healthy years of life lost to “unwanted” human-induced dissonance.

WHO’s research team found that at least one million healthy years of life are lost each year in Europe alone attributable to noise pollution, a total that’s exclusive of industrial workplace noise. The authors concluded that the evidence is “overwhelming” that exposure to environmental noise has adverse effects on the population’s health, and ranked traffic noise second behind air pollution among public health threats. The authors also determined that while pollution in general is decreasing, noise pollution is increasing.

The Australian Academy of Science sounded another alarm bell. People incorrectly assume, the AAS opined, that while they’re sleeping, noise is shut out. AAS advises, however, that the human ear, because of its extreme sensitivity, never rests. Even during sleep, ears are working; it’s a permanently open auditory channel. The ear is constantly processing background noises from car traffic, aircraft or music, which eventually can lead to the same health problems that WHO listed. The finding from both WHO and AAS were supported by other European health specialists. The Imperial College London as well as Barts and the London School of Medicine found ties between road traffic noise and the onset of type 2 diabetes.

If the Biden administration is aware of the health dangers that overpopulation poses to the nation, as the European researchers have extensively chronicled, there’s no evidence of it. Migrants who have reached the U.S. interior in search of a better life will need homes, roads, transportation, schools and hospitals, the construction of which create constant noise.

Citizens will have to pay not only the fiscal tab to transition the illegal immigrants into the U.S., but may also have to sacrifice their good health.

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Copyright 2021 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].

While a disbelieving nation is focused on the endless border crisis, more immigration sleight of hand is ongoing in Washington. Cloaked in Congress-speak, the troubling details of the Build Back Better Act are being hidden from a bad-news weary public.

The National Border Patrol Council’s Rio Grande Valley chapter vice president Chris Cabrera told Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) that the widely cited 400,000 “got-aways” represents a significant undercount. The total number of aliens who evaded border patrol detection is, Cabrera said, “at least twice if not three times that number,” as many as 1.2 million illegal immigrants. Add the 1.2 million not tallied to those among the 1.7 million caught and released in fiscal year 2021, and all of a sudden, the U.S. has a new population roughly the equivalent size of Phoenix, the country’s fifth largest city.

The border crisis is public, seen in its full inglorious detail on the nightly news. Congress’ immigration shenanigans occur behind closed doors and are incomprehensible to nonimmigration lawyers. Nevertheless, the open borders and Capitol Hill wrangling have the same goal: a huge, nation-altering immigration increase.

Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough rejected amnesty Plans “A” and “B,” concluding each time that transformative immigration changes don’t belong in budget reconciliation legislation. That should have ended the amnesty discussion. But, undeterred, expansionist Democratic senators have nevertheless stealthily included provisions in Biden’s bill that will significantly increase legal immigration and subsequent chain migration.

Writing for the Center for Immigration Studies, Robert Law, a former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official, noted that pro-expansion advocates have tried to hide the reconciliation bill’s massive immigration increases through “an accounting scam,” commonly known as “visa recapture.”

Every year, the State Department offers 140,000 work visas, 226,000 family-sponsored visas and 50,000 diversity visas to prospective immigrants. The reconciliation bill proposes going all the way back to 1992 to “capture” and reuse unissued visas, and to make them available to potential immigrants.

Law wrote that recapturing visas, as the reconciliation bill proposes, violates existing immigration law; in effect, there’s no such thing as an unused visa. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) wrote in protest to his Independent Vermont colleague Bernie Sanders, and called the recapture provisions “the crown jewel of corporate lobbying.” Breaking immigration law, however, isn’t a roadblock for the Biden administration – witness the border crisis which the president and his Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas created and encourage.

The Build Back Better bill has more destructive provisions aimed at U.S. tech workers which would further enrich cheap labor-addicted employers. Under the proposed legislation, an illegal alien already in the U.S., and with a two-year wait for his Green Card, could, assuming his sponsoring employer pays a $5,000 fee, adjust his immigration status to lawful permanent resident, exempt from annual limits and per-country caps.

About 583,420 H-1B visa holders and their families would jump to the head of the Green Card line. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. tech workers have had their personal and professional careers ruined by callous Big Tech employers who have exploited H-1B visa rules to hire cheaper foreign-born workers while they pass over more qualified Americans.

In his same letter to Sanders, Hagerty summed up how ruinous the legislation would be for U.S. tech workers: Those provisions “effectively terminate, for at least 10 years, all numerical limits on the annual allotment of green cards,” allowing “technology companies across America to employ a functionally limitless supply of cheaper foreign labor in place of willing, able, and qualified American workers.”

More than destructive to U.S. tech workers, the bill will create population spikes so dramatic that the U.S. Census Bureau will have to revise dramatically upward its growth projections. Pre-Build Back Better, the Census Bureau projected that U.S. population would grow by 79 million people between 2017-2060, with roughly 90 percent of that growth resulting from Congress’ immigration policies. Americans don’t want more sprawl, more traffic, and a less enjoyable quality of life.

A growing number of Americans feel that Biden is too focused, and at their expense, on bettering illegal immigrants’ lives and accommodating the donor class. The $185 trillion Build Back Better bill is a glaring example – vague promises about reaching climate goals, the proverbial vows to create millions of better jobs, affordable childcare availability, and other familiar, but never-kept pledges to improve Americans’ lives.

Immigration increases will change Americans lives, and should be discussed front and center in the Senate Judiciary Committee, not tucked away in the small print of a voluminous 1,684-pages bill that only a scattered handful of Senate aides have even read.

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Copyright 2021 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].

During the New York Yankees’ unprecedented run of five consecutive World Series Championships between 1949 and 1953, manager Casey Stengel had an arsenal of stars and superstars he relied on. Some were icons like Mickey Mantle, while others were interchangeable standouts like outfielders Irv Noren and Gene Woodling.

But a key Stengel cog was U.S. Marine Corp Sergeant Henry Albert “Hank” Bauer, who survived the World War II battles of Guadalcanal, Guam and Okinawa. During the three encounters, more than 12,000 Americans perished, and thousands more were severely injured. Bauer was awarded two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts and a Commendation Medal for sustained acts of bravery and meritorious service.

Bauer’s heroism came despite enduring 24 separate malaria attacks during his four years in the South Pacific. On Guam in 1944, shrapnel from an artillery shell torn open a hole in Bauer’s left thigh. As he was evacuated with his pal, Richard C. Goss, Bauer muttered, “There goes my baseball career,” a prediction that proved false.

Despite the severity of his wound, Bauer had a long, successful baseball life. More importantly, Bauer lived. Only six of the 64 men in Bauer’s platoon survived the brutal Guam battle. Bauer’s brother Herman, a catcher in the Chicago White Sox minor league system, was less fortunate. On July 12, 1944, Herman was killed in action in France.

Bauer always claimed that he never fully understood why he enlisted in 1942: “I saw the poster, and saw the blue uniform, and all that B.S….I hoped I could take up a trade, pipefitting perhaps, but the only thing I traded was a bat for a rifle.”

From his East St. Louis childhood, where he was the youngest of nine siblings, Bauer acquired a tough guy-persona. Bauer grew up admiring the St. Louis Cardinals Gas House Gang, and learned from a charter Gang member, Enos Slaughter, the importance of playing hard baseball. When pitchers walked Bauer, he ran full speed to first, just like Slaughter. “It’s no fun playing if you don’t make somebody else unhappy,” he told a Time Magazine reporter, “I do everything hard.”

Stengel admired Bauer’s grit. The Yankees manager said: “Too many people judge ballplayers solely by a hundred runs batted in or a .300 batting average. I like to judge my players in other ways, like the guy [Bauer] who happens to do everything right in a tough situation.”

In 1953, Stengel named Bauer the Yankees’ leadoff hitter, and during those 10 seasons the Bronx Bombers won nine pennants and seven World Series. As the Yankee roster evolved from the pre-war DiMaggio generation to the Mantle era, only Bauer and Berra played in all nine World Series.

In 1959, the Yankees traded Bauer and 1956 perfect World Series game hurler Don Larsen to the Kansas City Athletics for future home run champion Roger Maris. Bauer learned about his trade on the radio, and felt that he deserved to hear the disappointing news in person.

After his playing days ended, Bauer managed the Athletics, and then moved on to coach the Baltimore Orioles before, in 1962, he took the team’s helm. By 1966 the Orioles swept the favored Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. The following year, injuries devastated the Orioles, and their hampered play cost Bauer his job. He moved on briefly to manage the Oakland A’s before retiring to manage his Prairie View, Kan., liquor store.

Despite his reputation as quick to brawl – the most infamous episode involved a free-for-all at New York’s Copacabana night club during a 1957 Billy Martin birthday celebration – his teammates and the media loved him. Orioles’ pitcher Milt Pappas recalled that Bauer “had a raspy voice and scared the hell out of everyone. Underneath he was the nicest guy in the world.”

During his Yankees career, Bauer had the honor to play with several other military veterans: Whitey Ford, Army, Korean War; Yogi Berra, Navy, Purple Heart; Jerry Coleman, Marine Corp pilot, World War II and Korea, Distinguished Flying Cross (2); Phil Rizzuto, Navy, World War II; Joe DiMaggio, Army Air Forces, World War II, and Major Ralph Houk, Army Ranger, World War II, Purple Heart.

At age 84, his valor on America’s behalf esteemed and his diamond accomplishments admired by millions, Bauer died from lung cancer. Before passing, Bauer often said proudly: “The Yankee logo is like a Harvard degree.”

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Copyright 2021 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].

Facebook, the tech giant famous for censoring posts that promote political views opposite to its perspective, recently admitted that its users are aiding and abetting illegal immigration.

Responding to a letter sent by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Facebook acknowledged it allows online users to share information that advises how to immigrate illegally and, alternatively, how to hire human traffickers to smuggle aliens into the U.S., and then apply for asylum. Shocked by Facebook’s candid confession to helping aliens to criminally beat the system, Brnovich wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding that the Justice Department open a full investigation into Facebook to find a way to “stop its active encouragement and facilitation of illegal entry.”

Brnovich’s indignant letter continued: “Facebook’s policy of allowing posts promoting human smuggling and illegal entry into the U.S. to regularly reach its billions of users seriously undermines the rule of law. The company is a direct facilitator, and thus exacerbates, the catastrophe occurring at Arizona’s southern border.”

The odds that Garland will investigate Facebook are zero. Because Facebook has shown a blatant willingness to barefacedly break immigration laws, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, et al consider themselves above the law, and know that the feds won’t lift a finger to interfere with their agenda, no matter how brazen.

For example, in mid-October, DOJ caught the social media titan reserving jobs for and then hiring foreign-born H-1B visa workers. In December 2020, the Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER) in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division filed a complaint against Facebook with the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer. DOJ alleged that Facebook refused to recruit – and therefore could not hire – skilled U.S. tech workers. The investigation began in 2017 when then-President Donald Trump’s “Buy American and Hire American” Executive Order, mandating that American worker protections be prioritized, was in effect.

In its complaint, IER asserted that for positions it reserved for those temporary visa holders, no advertisement appeared on Facebook’s careers website, no online applications were accepted, and candidates had to physically submit snail mail applications – not email – to the company, an unusual procedure for a major corporation that rose to fame and fortune through the Internet.

But, in what the Center for Immigration Studies’ Andrew Arthur, a former Counsel on the House Judiciary Committee and a retired immigration judge, identified as “the crux” of the DOJ’s case, IER alleged that “even when U.S. workers do apply, Facebook will not consider them for the advertised positions,” but rather the company “fills these positions exclusively with temporary visa holders.” The DOJ concluded: “Simply put, Facebook reserves these positions for temporary visa holders.”

Facebook’s deliberate subversion of the H-1B’s original intent – to complement the domestic labor force when no other American employee can be found – denied qualified U.S. tech workers coveted white-collar jobs. Facebook deprived an estimated 2,600 U.S. workers a fair shot at professional jobs that, DOJ said in its filing, averaged an annual salary of $156,000.

Instead, Facebook hired workers who obtained it and other overseas visas in 2018 and 2019. Despite Facebook’s egregious and illegal offense, it settled the DOJ lawsuit for a token, slap on the wrist $14 million. Kristen Clarke, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division’s head, concluded: “Facebook is not above the law.”

Clarke’s claims aside, to Facebook, whose 2020 earnings were $21.2 billion and whose available cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were $61.95 billion as of December 31, 2020, $14 million is pocket change, a sum likely dismissed by the company’s chief executives as the cost of doing business.

Although the DOJ exposed Facebook’s bag of dirty, anti-American worker tricks, the H-1B program will continue without meaningful reform, at least during the current administration. Zuckerberg, his Forward.us lobbying arm, and other tech giants like Google, Twitter and Amazon are huge donors to the Democratic Party.

In politics, nothing is truer than the old phrase, “Money talks.”

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Copyright 2021 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].

The Atlanta Braves, once Milwaukee’s pride and joy and who earlier called Boston home, will take on the Houston Astros in the 2021 World Series.

The Braves have a rich history that’s largely lost in baseball’s sands of time. In his book “Boston Braves,” author Richard A. Johnson reminded readers that the Beaneaters pulled off one of baseball’s greatest upsets when, in 1914, they surprised Connie Mack’s heavily favored and powerful Philadelphia A’s in a four-game sweep.

In all, the Braves’ New England version captured 10 National League pennants, and put 38 players in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, among them Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Casey Stengel, Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn.

A near-miss for Cooperstown induction is Milwaukee’s Selva Lewis Burdette, a 203-game winner who dominated for the Braves in his team’s thrilling 1957 World Series triumph over the mighty New York Yankees.

Burdette was commonly known in baseball circles by his hometown nickname, “Nitro Lew,” his West Virginia birthplace. In the seven-game 1957 series, Burdette hurled three complete game victories, including a shutout in the Game 7 finale on just two days rest. In those three games, Burdette held slugging Yankees’ future Hall of Famers Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra to a harmless single between them and, for the series, a 0.67 ERA.

Burdette became the first pitcher to hurl three complete games, and two shutouts since 1905 when the New York Giants’ Christy Mathewson performed the remarkable feat. And “Nitro Lew” went about his Yankee domination quickly. The times of Burdette’s three starts were, respectively, 2:26, 2:00 and 2:34.

Society for American Baseball Research historian Alex Kupfer remembers Burdette as a fidgety moundsman whose constant hat and jersey adjustment, forehead-wiping, lip-touching and muttering to himself distracted batters who were convinced that the hurler was throwing a spit ball. Once asked to identify his best pitch, Burdette replied that it’s “the one I do not throw,” a subtle denial that he moistened the bulb. Originally drafted by the Yankees, Burdette had a golden opportunity to learn how to throw the spitball. During early days in the Yankees system, Burdette occasionally worked with roving pitching coach Burleigh Grimes, one of the game’s great spitballers. But, he was concerned that if he showed Burdette how to throw a spitter, the promising young right-hander would be thrown out of professional baseball.

Two years after his World Series Most Valuable Player performance, Burdette was a key protagonist in one of baseball’s most extraordinary games. On a rainynight in Milwaukee on May 26, 1959, Burdette faced off against the Pittsburgh Pirates’ crafty Harvey Haddix. For 12 innings, Haddix retired 36 consecutive Braves, while Burdette also tossed scoreless, but not perfect ball. Then, in the 13th inning Braves slugger Joe Adcock drove in Felix Mantilla, the winning run.

Mantilla had reached first on Pirates’ third baseman Don Hoak’s error. The imperfect Burdette nevertheless turned in an excellent performance; he threw 13 scoreless innings, allowed 12 hits and walked none. After the game Burdette phoned Haddix to sympathetically tell him, “You deserved to win, but I scattered all my hits, and you bunched your one.” Not appreciative of either Burdette’s sense of humor or his timing, the still-smarting Haddix hung up.

Before his 18-year career ended in 1967, Burdette had short, occasionally effective stints with the St. Louis Cardinals, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Chicago Cubs and the California Angels. When his active career ended, Burdette scouted, rejoined the Braves as Atlanta’s pitching coach, worked in public relations for a Milwaukee brewery and broadcast on Florida cable television. Although Burdette appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot for 15 consecutive years beginning in 1973, he always came up short.

In 2007, Burdette, a lung cancer victim, died at age 80 in Winter Garden, Fla., where he had taken up residency during his post-baseball career. At Burdette’s funeral, his World Series teammate, shortstop Johnny Logan, didn’t shed light on the decades-long unsolved mystery about crafty righty’s spitball. Logan, however, admitted in his eulogy that he couldn’t tell if Burdette threw a wet one, but he knew that his teammate “was a hell of a competitor.”

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

When pro-immigration activists accosted Krysten Sinema, in a ladies’ room stall earlier this month, the Arizona senator missed a great opportunity to score points with the state’s Independent and Republican voters.

Sinema, an adjunct School of Social Work professor at Arizona State University since 2003, was followed into a campus bathroom and recorded while inside. Living United for Change in Arizona, a radical organization, posted the Sinema video, which including a student identifing herself as illegally present.

Taping and then distributing the video, which is what Sinema’s brazen student activists did, violates Arizona law. Add that threatening a sitting senator is a federal felony that can land violators in prison for up to five years.

Instead of ducking the agitators, Sinema could have given them a brief review of immigration law, which clearly states that unlawfully present aliens are subject to immediate removal, that deferred action isn’t law but was created through presidential executive action, and that she was elected to represent all Arizonans’ interests, not just the alien lobby.

Of course, that’s a pipe dream. Instead, Sinema rebuked her students in a lukewarm statement on her Senate website which concluded: “It is the duty of elected leaders to avoid fostering an environment in which honestly held policy disagreements serve as the basis for vitriol – raising the temperature in political rhetoric and creating a permission structure for unacceptable behavior.”

Sinema should be looking ahead to her 2024 re-election bid, and focus on the role immigration will play when she defends her seat. While Democrats currently hold both Arizona Senate seats, Mark Kelly narrowly won a 2020 special election, and will face a strong Republican challenger in 2022, by which time immigration will be more of a hot-button issue than ever.

Over the coming months, at Arizona’s Yuma sector, the illegal immigrant surge is expected to surpass Texas’ Del Rio Sector. In previous years, Yuma ranked nearly last in border apprehensions. In FY 2020, 8,804 migrants were apprehended throughout the sector. A confidential Customs and Border Protection source said his unit now sees the incoming total exceed that amount every two weeks, with family units and unaccompanied minors anxious to surrender.

The Tucson and Douglas sections also are under illegal alien surges which have so overwhelmed Arizonans that signs and bumper stickers are found statewide – “BLM, Biden Loves Minors.” The latest bulletin from Biden’s White House shows that of 7,000 refugees, from the 125,000 cap he’s established, 422 are being sent to Arizona. The refugees may come from nations known to have terrorist ties: Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Venezuela, Myanmar, Eritrea and Sudan. To date, 1,610 Afghans have been resettled in Arizona with more to come soon – and a total of 95,000 to be resettled throughout the U.S.

In short, significant immigration is headed Arizona’s way, more than what the average voter in the purple state might deem feasible over the short-term. Sinema, a narrow winner in 2018, should consider her immigration position carefully for the 2024 re-election bid. Whatever else happens between today and then, she’ll be forced to explain, if not defend, Biden’s reckless open borders and resettlement agenda that may have, three years from now, wrought substantial social and economic damage to the nation.

Biden has facilitated drug and human smuggling, and the worldwide criminal networks have taken full advantage. At the very least, Biden has taken major strides, against the will and wishes of most citizens, to destroy sovereign America.

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Copyright 2021 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].

Major League Baseball’s odyssey toward the World Series began with two wild card games — the Boston Red Sox defeating the New York Yankees, and the Los Angeles Dodgers beating the St. Louis Cardinals.

Luckily for MLB, the two games featured four of baseball’s historic and most revered teams. Television rating were high, but the games were a slog, especially for East Coast fans. The American League contest was a tedious 3:13 hours, and the National League’s game was played at a quicksand-like 4:15 hour pace. The Dodgers-Cardinals face off was a tight 3-1, but most East Coast viewers missed the exciting Chris Taylor bottom-of the ninth home run that sealed the Dodgers’ victory.

For dinosaur fans that yearn for fewer and speedier playoff games, the forecast is grim. In 2022, the fondest wish of MLB owners will come true when a new collective bargaining agreement will expand the wild card from its current one-game, sudden death format to the best-of-three. More than half of baseball’s 30 teams will be post-season eligible, and inevitably MLB will expand to 32, thereby further diluting the talent pool that fans pay a king’s ransom to watch. As a results, the playoffs will endlessly grind on with impossibly long, overlapping seasons.

Post-season’s qualifying standards have plunged since 1968, when the Detroit Tigers topped the American League and advanced straight to the World Series and won — no championship series required.

Ten times in history, teams have won 100 plus games and not even qualified for playoffs. Led by batting champion Norm Cash and his .361 average, the 1961 Tigers won 101 games, but finished eight games behind the Yankees. That’s the way it should be. Teams that feel deprived when they don’t get past the wild card have a simple solution: win more games during the season. Under the projected format, however, teams under .500 that qualify for the playoffs will be commonplace.

Unhappy fans might as well throw in the towel. Money overrides all other considerations. As money-hungry MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said: “Baseball is a growth industry. Eventually, we’d like to get to 32 teams.” Under the new set-up, MLB owners and players will cash in. The league currently grosses more than $10 billion annually. With two new clubs, the owners would likely add $2 billion or more in expansion fees, and new media rights’ revenues.

MLB negotiated new seven-year television contracts with Fox and Turner Broadcasting – TBS and TNT – which will fetch $8.3 billion, a 40 percent increase over prior contracts, mostly for the right to broadcast postseason games. Expansion, possibly to Portland, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Nashville, Montreal, Vancouver or Mexico, is assuredly in baseball’s future, assuming 75 percent of the owners vote favorably. More teams mean more playoff games, and will generate much more revenue.

Players are all-in on expansion, too. As part of the new collective bargaining agreement, players also win. More team revenues will mean higher minimum salaries, and player-friendly free-agency agreements. Today, baseball’s minimum salary is $572,000 — the average is $4.2 million — and the most eye-popping incomes are the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout, a $427 million contract paid out over 12 years, and the New York Yankees’ Garrett Cole, $324 million spread out over nine years. Trout and Cole’s annual incomes are $37.7 million and $32.4 million, respectively.

In his giddy anticipation of never-ending revenues, Manfred is overlooking one important variable. Baseball’s television audience is dwindling. The under-18 market doesn’t care about baseball, a sport they consider too boring. Once baseball’s most passionate fans, youths have shifted their allegiance to soccer, basketball and football. Older fans, another of baseball’s traditional backbones, are dissatisfied with the constant changes, and have lost interest.

Younger and older fans agree that baseball’s most important games, the playoffs and the All-Star Game, start too late; they yearn for old-fashioned day games. Kids go to school, adults work. All-Star Game television ratings have been in free-fall for years, and bottomed out in 2021 when only 8.2 million tuned in.

Proof of fans’ indifference: compared to 2019, the last full 162-game season, the 29 regional sports networks that Nielsen Media Research measured reflected a 12 percent audience drop.

Baseball is on a collision course with overkill, and many consider its death overdue. No fan, young or old, is naïve enough to think that Manfred cares about baseball. His self-confessed mission is simple: let’s follow the money.

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Copyright 2021 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].

For the second consecutive month, Wall Street analysts and media business forecasters badly missed the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s job creation total.

Dow Jones projected 500,000 new jobs for September, compared to the 194,000 new jobs reported by the Biden administration. Television commentators were aghast at their second straight whiff – in August, the so-called experts predicted 720,000 new jobs, while the economy created just 235,000 jobs.

No surprise that COVID-19 took the brunt of the blame for the steep declines, particularly among workers in education and local/state employment, but also among bus drivers, food service workers and substitute teachers. Another variable that added to the dismal September results was the disappearance from the labor force of many older, low-wage workers still fearful about COVID-19 and its delta variant.

A historic 11 million jobs are open and available. As far as the economy and job creation are concerned, the U.S. is still in COVID-19’s grasp.

“We’re hiring” signs are everywhere, yet few workers have stepped up to fill the jobs. Although openings are at or near an all-time record, one hurdle to attracting employees is that many of the positions require in-person work for construction, hospitality, delivery services or warehousing, the exact types of jobs too many Americans shun in the current environment.

Thanks to the pandemic fear the government and scare-mongering media have instilled in the general public, potential workers continue to stay away from close-contact employment. Consequently, most job seekers are hopeful of finding mostly unavailable remote work. A recent review of the ZipRecruiter website found that only one in 10 postings offered remote employment.

When workers are in short supply, the clarion call for more immigration inevitably follows. Bill Kristol, for example, once a conservative, now a Democrat, and always an immigration advocate, put out a tweet which proclaimed that immigration could solve the economy’s employment doldrums. Kristol wrote: “We can debate infrastructure, tax policy, government spending, etc. But it’s not a close call as to the one thing that would do the most for our economy across the board: More immigration. Both ‘skilled’ and ‘unskilled.’ Which the Administration and Congress have done nothing on.”

Well – not exactly nothing. Kristol must not be paying attention to the immigration news. Encouraging illegal immigration, bringing Afghan evacuees to the U.S. and raising the refugee cap are definitely something. Soon the U.S. will have a worker surplus. The 15,000 Haitians who surged the border, the 50,000 or more Afghanistan evacuees and the 125,000 refugees that Biden has committed to for fiscal 2021-22, and the 2 million released-at-the-border illegal aliens will inevitably receive employment authorization.

Also on their way to compete for jobs in the U.S. labor pool are the annual 1 million-plus legal immigrants who, as part of their permanent residency, receive lifetime valid work permits. Finally, add about 700,000 guest workers that traditionally enter the U.S. to perform jobs which range from medical doctors to agriculture-based employees.

The approximately 1 million legal and 2 million illegal immigrants, the evacuees, the refugees and the guest workers will go a long way to making Kristol and the immigration lobby’s dreams come true. And if Congress passes the reconciliation bill that it’s kicking around, about 8 million more aliens will be granted amnesty, receive legal status and work permits. COVID-19 restrictions could impact the foreign-born arrivals, but illegal immigrant amnesty candidates already represent several million work permits.

High immigration and the lower wages immigrants earn harm those that can least withstand economic setbacks – American blacks and Hispanics, other minorities, the disabled, recently arrived low-skilled legal immigrants and others without a college degree. More immigration, regardless of how much it may hurt Americans who fund it, is the blueprint that the Biden administration has, to the disappointment of most, chosen to follow, and is committed to.

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Copyright 2021 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 a recent ABC “Good Morning America” interview with co-anchor Robin Roberts, former President Barack Obama sent a clear, but somewhat couched, warning signal to President Joe Biden.

Obama told Roberts that open borders are unsustainable, an observation that ABC subsequently edited out of the televised portion of the interview. Although Obama didn’t specifically mention that by ignoring open borders, Biden was risking the 2022 House and Senate races (and a filibuster-proof Democratic majority), that was his sub rosa message.

During his eight years in the White House, Obama learned much about Americans’ immigration opinions. In 2013, the Democratic-controlled Senate overwhelmingly passed an unpopular immigration bill commonly referred to as the Gang of Eight bill (the eight being the four Republicans and four Democrats who wrote the first draft).

By having an equal number of Republicans and Democrats as cosponsors, the Senate could promote the legislation as bipartisan. In fact, the onboard Gang of Eight Republicans had career-long pro-immigration voting records.

Looked at closely, the bill offered many benefits for the 11 million-plus illegal immigrants – immediate amnesty for the unlawfully present aliens, lifetime valid work permits, Social Security, health care and other affirmative benefits.

The Congressional Budget Office predicted that, if it became law, the bill would create a net population growth of 10.4 million within a decade. The projected net population growth would also mean an increase of about 1.6 million temporary workers and their dependents. For citizens, however, the bill vaguely promised more border enforcement at some point down the road. The bottom line on the bill: amnesty right now; enforcement, maybe later.

Although Obama used his bully pulpit, and the media hailed the legislation, the majority of U.S. Representatives knew how unpopular the immigration bill was among their constituents, and also were aware that their re-election bid was not far away.

Tellingly, from the Gang of Eight, only South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham faced voters in the then-upcoming November 2014 election. But his state was a Republican stronghold that hadn’t elected a Senate Democrat since 1954, when Strom Thurman – before he switched parties – won as a write-in candidate.

Analysts concluded that the senators knew that immigration bill was unpopular, but hoped that by the time their turn at the polling place arrived, voters would forget. In the end, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid never forwarded the bill to the House for consideration, and it therefore never became law.

The Gang of Eight bill led to a 2014 disaster at the polls for Democrats. Republicans won nine Democratic-controlled seats, held the 15 seats they were defending, and regained Senate control for the first time since 2007.

If pending immigration legislation angered voters in 2014, imagine what their sentiments will be in November 2022 after more than 2 million illegal immigrants, including thousands of Haitians, will have crossed into U.S. territory.

Biden’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas further rolled out the red carpet for illegal immigrants, and added to voters’ ire when he said that illegal presence is no longer sufficient cause for deportation. Mayorkas’ statement represents a blatant immigration law violation, which requires the attorney general to remove aliens.

Citizens who must fund illegal immigration may be growing weary. In 2017, U.S. taxpayers doled out approximately $116 billion at the federal, state and local levels to provide for services to illegal aliens, according to a study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Biden’s gamble is that a year from now, the images of destitute Haitians gathered under the Del Rio bridge, and the unchecked Northern Triangle caravans entering the U.S. will be ancient history. But the current immigration crisis is more severe than the 2013 amnesty threat, and voters may be unwilling to forget how effortlessly Biden forfeited American sovereignty.

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Copyright 2021 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].

Last week, the Biden administration announced it will begin eight daily flights to return Haitian illegal immigrants from their makeshift shelters under Texas’ International Bridge.

The first flights left Sunday. As many as 14,000 Haitians have arrived in Del Rio with the anticipation that, like thousands of other aliens who preceded them, they’ll be processed and admitted to the U.S. But, the rub: Haiti, recovering from a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people and damaged more than 100,000 homes, is unwilling to accept more than three flights a day.

Since Biden’s first day in office, he’s abdicated the chief executive’s responsibility to enforce immigration laws that Congress has passed, and previous presidents have signed. So forgive me if the administration’s official statement that returning the Haitians is “about border enforcement” rings hollow.

More probable is that the disconcerting images and videos of thousands of Haitians wading across the Rio Grande, then clustered in squalid, unsanitary conditions – with rumors of more on the way – caught the attention of The Washington Post and The New York Times. Their awareness led to what is, for those publications, a harsh appraisal of the administration’s border crisis mismanagement.

After observing the sea of humanity at the bridge, Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican whose district runs along the majority of the Texas border with Mexico, said he thought he was in a third world country with literally no border – “it’s just been muddied over.” The administration may have concluded that it couldn’t afford to lose the establishment media’s immigration policy support.

An Associated Press story on the migrant airlift to Haiti predicted that no more than two planes would depart daily, a conclusion that’s probably the most optimistic possible outcome. Whether two or eight flights back to Haiti, Texas would still be left with thousands of Haitian migrants, as well as foreign nationals from 90 countries arriving daily to seek asylum or humanitarian protection. Thousands of Haitians arrived stateside before the earthquake hit.

Nowhere has Biden’s law-shirking been more evident than his feckless open border tolerance that’s gravely harmed several border states, none more so than Texas. To his credit, Gov. Greg Abbott with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s assistance launched “Operation Lone Star” to push back against unchecked illegal immigration, fentanyl trafficking that with Chinese money launderers’ helping hand has earned criminals billions of dollars, and human smuggling that too often leads to children sold into the sex trade. Abbott’s strategy to protect Texans came after his agreement to work with Biden on the closure of six Texas ports of entry to restore immigration enforcement collapsed.

Operation Lone Star will deploy air, ground, marine and tactical border security assets to high threat areas to deny Mexican Cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas. In a statement, Abbott said that because of Biden’s neglect, the southern border crisis continues to escalate. Abbott added: “Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans. We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.” Last week, Abbott signed a $1.8 billion border security bill to increase immigration detention facilities, $750 million of which will be applied to a so-called border barrier that could include temporary chain fences and concrete barriers. This summer, Texas committed $250 million as a down payment for its version of the Trump border wall.

The Constitution, Article IV, Section 4, “guarantees to every state in this union” that “it shall protect each of them against Invasion.” With an anticipated 2 million illegal aliens who will surge the border this year, invasion is the proper word to describe conditions in the Rio Grande Valley, and other Texas entry points. The total illegal crossers include an estimated 40,000 COVID-19 positive aliens. Vaccinations are not mandated for these crossers, who are released into destinations across the nation. And in Texas, a record 10,800 unaccompanied minors entered. August was the second consecutive month that the Department of Homeland Security reported more than 200,000 illegal immigrant encounters.

Once released, aliens become the states’ responsibility – jobs training, housing, transportation, medical care, education – all the necessities that humans need to lead meaningful lives, but which taxpayers must underwrite. If the White House violates the Constitution, and refuses to protect Texas and the other 49 states against foreign incursion, then to safeguard its citizens, individual states must assume the responsibility to defend themselves.

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Copyright 2021 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].