Cagle World

The 2021 National Football League season is underway, with the Pittsburgh Steelers starting the season 1-0 after dispatching the Buffalo Bills.

Even though the Steelers played on enemy turf in Buffalo’s Highmark Stadium, the Yinzers felt right at home. The Pittsburgh contingent among the 70,000 football-starved fans encouraged the Steelers by waving thousands of Terrible Towels. Wherever the Steelers play, loyal followers wave their black and gold towels with abandon. No matter the occasion, there’s a towel to match.

Around Pittsburgh or online, fans can buy towels for about $10 that celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, Independence Day, Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day. Steelers’ fans have taken their towels to Iraq, Afghanistan, the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Everest’s peak, the International Space Station, the South Pole, the Great Wall of China and Vatican City. A pink towel, introduced in 2009, promotes breast cancer awareness.

At Heinz Field, a Terrible Towel Wall displays each of the special edition towels for the Steelers’ worldwide, stadium-visiting fans to admire. The towel is hung over televisions and radios during game time, and is often used as a fun drape for pets and babies. When Steelers’ receiver Hines Ward won the 2011 Dancing with the Stars’ Mirrorball Trophy, his former teammate and Hall of Fame running back Franco Harris urged him on by twirling his Terrible Towel.

But few non-Yinzers know the touching legacy behind the towel, which is much more than evidence of Steelers’ excellence, and the team’s passionate fan base.

Here’s the towel’s wonderful backstory: Myron Cope, a beloved Steelers’ broadcaster, the team’s voice for 35 years, and a National Radio Hall of Fame member, created the towel in 1975, and it debuted on December 27 in a winning playoff game against the Baltimore Colts.

From that moment on, fans and players considered the towel the team’s lucky charm, as the Steelers, in the following weeks, defeated the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys, and then won Super Bowl IX, beating the Minnesota Vikings, 16-6. The Steelers’ successful play helped towel sales take off.

In 1996, Cope turned the towel’s trademark over to the Allegheny Valley School (AVS), which has several campuses and group homes throughout Pennsylvania, and operates more than 125 programs across Pennsylvania designed to help the developmentally disabled. Cope’s son, Danny, once attended. Danny, who has never spoken a word and is today 54, enrolled in 1992. Thanks to the loving care he received at AVS, Danny eventually moved on to a meaningful assembly line job at a major snack food company.

AVS receives each penny of profit from towel sales. Cope specifically outlined how the school must spend the proceeds. Each dollar goes to benefit residents and must not go into the general construction fund. The money is earmarked for, among other essentials, specialized wheelchairs and programs that will enable the most challenged to turn on lights or music by merely blinking their eyes. As the school’s then-chief executive officer, Regis Champ, said: “Our needs are daily.”

Steelers’ administration manages the marketing of towels and then cuts a check, usually in the low five figures, payable to the school. When the Steelers play in the Super Bowl, sales often exceed $1 million. Some eager fans have purchased 200 towels at a time. Since Cope donated the Terrible Towel’s trademark, sales have generated more than $3 million for AVS.

As Champ recalled the glorious day that the towel’s rights were transferred to AVS, Cope came into his office with a pile of documents, threw them down on his desk and said, “‘Regis, I’m giving you the Terrible Towel.’ I was speechless. I knew that this would be the legacy that outlived Myron.”

In 2008, Cope, age 79, passed away. His daughter Elizabeth draped Cope’s coffin with a quilt that a fan made out of Terrible Towels and sent to the Cope family.

Whether you are a Steelers fan or not, remember that Terrible Towels promote a most worthy cause, helping autistic people get on the road to living normal lives.

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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].

Prior to his death, Los Angeles’ Sunday night talk show host Terry Anderson used to open his broadcast with a heads up to his listeners: “If you ain’t mad, you ain’t paying attention.”

Most Americans are paying attention to the wide-open Southwest border, and the Afghan nationals’ influx. But, to use Anderson’s vernacular, Americans ain’t paying enough attention, and they ain’t angry enough.

The combination of an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants that will cross the Southwest border this year, a minimum of 50,000 Afghans, and the probability of an increase in the FY 2022 refugee admissions cap that President Biden promised to raise to 125,000 from President Trump’s 15,000 will dramatically alter the nation’s demographics, and might, over time, forever restructure America.

Some will reject as alarmist the claim that Biden’s refusal to enforce existing immigration law will lead to America’s demise. But, as Anderson prophetically warned, pay attention. The border crossers, the Afghans and the resettled refugees – whatever number they end up being – are here permanently.

The new arrivals will soon receive lawful standing either through parole, temporary protected status or asylum petitions. To pretend that the Biden administration isn’t 100 percent committed to legalizing the border crossers and evacuated Afghans – refugees admitted under the Refugee Act of 1980 guidelines are lawfully present – is to have been dozing since Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki asserts that the arriving Afghans have been carefully vetted, that they’re U.S. allies who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S. against the Taliban, and that some hold Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs). Department of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also insists arrivals will undergo “careful screening and security vetting.”

But the State Department in its second quarter FY 2021 report that recounted SIV issuance procedures found that the processing time is 703 days which means that U.S. officials cannot possibly have properly vetted most of the 24,000 already arrived Afghans. Moreover, State and Homeland Security Departments data from January through March showed that Afghan SIV denial rates hit 84 percent; 137 SIVs were approved, while 728 were denied. Rejected were those whose service doesn’t meet the SIV bar, and they appealed. The State Department said that of the 713 appeals filed during the second quarter, 601 were denied again.

Here’s where the U.S. actually is vis-à-vis Afghan resettlement. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas refuses to say how many Afghans will ultimately resettle in the U.S. Those that are often officially referred to as SIV holders are in fact SIV applicants with, based on the State Department’s second quarter 84 percent denial rate, little chance of approval. Most of the arrivals have no approved visa of any type, cannot be accurately classified as refugees, and are therefore ineligible for social services, including Medicaid and cash assistance that they’ll rely on during their initial resettlement, and beyond.

Mayorkas has granted many Afghan arrivals humanitarian parole, an immigrant status that, unlike civilian parole, has no supervisory officer. Paroled Afghans come and go freely from their temporary military housing. But parole doesn’t include Supplemental Security Income, food stamps, employment assistance and medical service. To correct what it views as unfair, the State Department began an Afghan Parolee Support Program. According to multiple resettlement officials involved in drafting the plan, parolees will be helped with taxpayer-funded housing, transportation, food, cash, clothing, legal counsel and other services.

Over the short-term, the millions of foreign nationals that have illegally crossed the Southwest border, the Afghan evacuees, and the soon-to-be resettled FY2022 refugees will receive lifetime valid employment authorization that will allow them to compete in the U.S. labor market to the detriment of American workers and recent college graduates. With between 5 and 6 million unemployed Americans, looser labor markets hurt job seekers.

Over the longer term, chain migration will allow the thousands of Afghans as well as the border surgers and the new refugees to petition extended family members. Princeton University immigration scholars found that the average immigrant sponsors 3.45 nuclear and nonnuclear family relatives, a multiplier that creates a population boom.

The Biden administration is either clueless about the adverse effect of its immigration enthusiasm on citizens’ futures or, more likely, is indifferent to 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].

For Major League Baseball teams and their fans, Labor Day is a benchmark to project which teams will make it to the playoffs.

Using Sabermetric analytics, teams are virtual division-winning locks if they lead by at least six games on Labor Day, but are improbable for postseason play if they trail by more than 3.5 games in the Wild Card standings.

As of this writing, according to the SABR formula, playing this fall will be the Houston Astros, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago White Sox. A cluster of teams are on the cusp and battling for the remaining seven playoff slots: the Tampa Bay Rays, Atlanta Braves, the Boston Red Sox, the Oakland Athletics, the New York Yankees, the San Francisco Giants, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds.

But pre-Sabermetrics, and before multiple playoff levels lasted until Halloween, Labor Day was considered summer’s last gasp. It was a great time to head out to the ballpark to enjoy afternoon baseball and, for lucky fans, a scheduled doubleheader, a relic from the National Pastime’s long-ago era.

On September 2, 1957, 40,000 fans poured into Wrigley Field’s friendly confines to watch the perennially second division Chicago Cubs (49-77) take on the eventual World Series champion Milwaukee Braves (79-49). For Hall of Fame Cubs’ slugger Ernie Banks, famous for saying, “Let’s play two,” the balmy, late summer afternoon’s double-dip was what he hoped for.

In the opener, Braves’ manager Fred Haney sent “Nitro” Lew Burdette to the slab. A month later, Burdette would become one of 12 pitchers to win three games in a single World Series as Braves unseated the New York Yankees as champions. Wrigley fans got their money’s worth and then some on that long-ago Labor Day.

While the twin bill had little importance on the pennant’s outcome, the National League home run crown was up for grabs between Banks and Hall of Famer Henry Aaron, baseball’s African-American superstars. Another long-distance threat, the Braves’ third baseman and Hall of Famer Eddie Mathews, was also in the lineup.

Game one’s outcome was settled early. After a half-inning, the Braves led 6-0; the slugfest was on. The Braves outlasted the overmatched Cubs 23-10. The big bats boomed: Banks, three for five with two homers, and 4 RBIs; Mathews, three for five with a homer and three RBIs, and Aaron, three for six with six RBIs, a daily total that kept him on his way to becoming baseball’s all-time RBI leader. A fourth Hall of Famer, switch-hitting Red Schoendienst, scored four runs for the day. The Chicago Tribune summed up the Labor Day blowout by declaring that “the game became a debacle in the opening inning.”

The nightcap was, comparatively, a yawner as the crafty Braves’ righty Bob Trowbridge struck out nine, and pitched a complete game shut out to best the Cubs, 4-0. Banks, Aaron and Mathews played in game two but, perhaps exhausted from their opening game heroics, were limited to a collective three for 10. In all, from the 16 position players penciled into the opening lineups, 12 Cubs and Braves started and finished both games.

The Wrigley fans were also treated to a glimpse of a young Braves’ outfielder who soared to instant success, then just as quickly vanished from the big-league spotlight. Called up from Triple-AAA Wichita in late July, rookie outfielder Bob Hazle set baseball on fire when, over a span of 134 at bats, Hazle hit .403. His amazing proficiency helped the Braves get into the World Series, and earned Hazle the nickname “Hurricane.” Author Howard Bryant wrote that Hazle’s feats were the “greatest five-week show in the history of baseball.” But injuries shortened Hazle’s career, and by 1958, he was out of baseball.

In 1982, the Cubs retired Banks’ #14, and on Opening Day 2008, unveiled a statue of Chicago’s most popular person. Two years before his 2015 death at age 83, Banks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a U.S. citizen can be awarded.

When his active career ended, Mathews was the only player to have represented the Braves in all three of their home cities: Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta. Later, he managed the Braves and coached several MLB teams. His 1978 Hall of Fame induction, some claim, was delayed because of Mathews’ frosty relationship with the media that, in his view, intruded excessively in his personal life.

Finally, Aaron too received the Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as many other baseball and civil rights awards. Since Aaron hit his 744 home runs without taking performance-enhancing drugs, many baseball historians consider Aaron baseball’s legitimate home run king. On January 22, 2021, two weeks before his 87th birthday and while at his Atlanta home, Aaron died in his sleep.

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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].

Recently, the New York Times published an op-ed written by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, “There Is No Good Reason You Should Have to Be a Citizen to Vote,” which it described as “part of a series exploring bold ideas to revitalize and renew the American experiment.”

Bold, revitalize and renew are the misleading words that the Times chose instead of the more accurate: radical, audacious and subversive.

The American experiment that the Times boasts proudly of championing is overthrowing America’s existing, time-honored voting system, which legally excludes voting rights for noncitizens.

Abrahamian, the Canadian born author of “The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen,” and who holds Swiss and Iranian citizenship, proposes that voting rights be given to foreign nationals residing in the U.S. on temporary work visas, and Green Card holders. Those immigrant categories would include non-English speakers and those who have briefly lived in the U.S.

Ironically, Abrahamian’s proposal would also extend to illegal aliens who have knowingly and willingly broken U.S. law, and presumably would also be granted to the estimated 2 million aliens who will surge the Southwest Border this year.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 expressly barred noncitizens from voting. But the 1996 act has been steadily chipped away at and criminally disregarded.

A San Francisco 2016 referendum joined a few other municipalities to give illegal immigrants voting privileges in local school board elections. The supporting argument was that about one-third of San Francisco school district pupils had foreign-born parents. Whether those parents were legally present was not part of the debate. Advocates also speciously argued that participating in the electoral process gives unlawfully present immigrants a greater sense of community involvement.

Illegal immigrants have, fraudulently and feloniously, registered to vote and cast ballots in federal elections. In its essay, “Aliens and Voter Fraud,” the Center for Immigration Studies wrote that when Old Dominion University and George Mason University researchers analyzed noncitizen participation rates from the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies’ 2008 and 2010 data, they estimated that roughly 620,000 noncitizens were registered to vote prior to the 2008 election.

The researchers then turned their attention to the 2008 North Carolina presidential results as well as to the Minnesota senate race. By comparing the noncitizen turnout to the vote margin needed to win the elections, Old Dominion and George Mason analysts concluded that noncitizen voting likely won the elections for the Democratic Party candidates in both instances. In the North Carolina election, authors wrote that “it is likely … that John McCain would have won North Carolina were it not for the votes for Obama cast by noncitizens.”

The Minnesota senate election was one of the most crucial congressional races in the 2008 election cycle, given that it ensured a 60-vote filibuster-proof Democratic majority. Notably, after a mandatory recount, and eight months after Election Day, 312 votes determined the Senate winner. Highlighting the paper-thin margin in which Democrat candidate Al Franken defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman, the authors wrote that “participation by more than 0.65 percent of noncitizens in MN is sufficient to account for the entirety of Franken’s margin. Our best guess is that nearly ten times as many [noncitizens] voted.”

A University of Alabama study, “Immigration Status, Immigrant Family Ties, and Support for the Democratic Party,” concluded that immigrants, their children and their grandchildren are all more likely than Americans without close immigrant relatives to support the Democratic Party. If the entire illegal alien and temporary resident population were granted voting rights, Abrahamian’s goal, years if not decades will pass before the GOP won enough federal elections to make a difference.

To all but the woke, a group that includes the Times, Abrahamian and far too many Washington, D.C., elites, sovereign American and inalienable voting rights that go with citizenship are treasured values to defend, fight and die for.

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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].

No sooner had the Taliban taken control of Kabul than the establishment demanded that thousands of Afghans be given immediate U.S. resettlement privileges.

Allegedly, and likely at least partially accurate, some Afghans are friendly to the U.S. government, and worked with American military. Now, so goes the standard patter, with our allies’ lives reportedly endangered, the Biden administration has a moral duty to invite them to America to find safe haven.

In a bitter irony, the most passionate cry to immediately resettle Afghans came from former President George W. Bush whose fallacious “weapons of mass destruction” claim first drew the U.S. military into a 20-year long Middle East quagmire. Bush, a devoted immigration expansionist, urged Biden to “cut the red tape” to expedite Afghans’ safe and secure exit out of the now Taliban-controlled country.

As the old English proverb goes, and as history has proven, “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.” The first hurdle in a resettlement plan is President Biden’s demonstrated inability to effectively manage any immigration-related issue.

The southern U.S. Border, where last month a 21-year high of 210,000 aliens crossed, is the most shocking example. But other instances include Biden’s unconstitutional refusal to enforce existing immigration law, his proposed 96 percent budget reduction in border security assets and his gutting of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that protects the interior. Given Biden’s dismal immigration track record, only the most naïve could assume that his State or Homeland Security Departments could successfully vet tens of thousands of Afghans.

To be clear, fair-minded Americans want to help allies who have supported us in the extended Afghan War. But Americans don’t want the Afghan Special Immigration Visa (SIV) program to devolve into a similar situation to that of the fraud-ridden Iraqi SIV program. In June, Reuters reported that 4,000 Iraqis are suspected of filing fraudulent resettlement applications. The State Department is re-examining 40,000 cases that involve more than 104,000 people, 95 percent of them still in Iraq, and has frozen those applications until further clarification. More than 500 already-admitted Iraqi refugees have been implicated in the fraud and could be deported or stripped of their U.S. citizenship.

Despite documented fraud in the Iraqi SIV program, Biden initiated a similar program for Afghanistan. The Department of Defense reportedly will, post-Kabul, place 30,000 Afghan refugees in Wisconsin’s Ft. McCoy and Texas’ Ft. Bliss. Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs John Kirby announced that, “We want to have the capacity to get up to several thousand immediately, and want to be prepared for the potential of tens of thousands.” Kirby’s inevitable undertaking will cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

The border crisis is expected to result this year in 2 million aliens, unvetted and some COVID-19 positive, allowed into the country. On August 17, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled a new “Case Management Pilot Program” to pay cities, counties and nongovernmental organizations to offer “cultural orientation,” medical screening, mental health services, legal orientation programs and other assistance for illegal immigrants who have been caught and released. U.S. taxpayers will fully fund the administration’s program, a version of which the Trump administration canceled because of cost inefficiency.

The 2 million-plus border surge, added to the as-yet-undetermined tens of thousands of Afghan refugees that will be resettled, will ensure that the nation’s transformation will continue unabated. Census Bureau data showed that immigration, births to immigrants, the opioid epidemic and lower-than-anticipated birthrates among millennials after the Great Recession have contributed to a more diverse America.

The border fiasco and the Afghanistan mess are the direct consequences of wholly misguided, power-crazed elitists and inept military leadership. But, as always, Americans pay the financial tab and must adapt to whatever cultural changes and fallout that accompany the irresponsible politics that Washington, to citizens’ detriment, insists on forcing upon them.

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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].

In 2019, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that the first thing he did when he arrived at his office was to check the previous day’s border apprehension totals. Under 1,000 was, Johnson said, “a relatively good day,” and over 1,000 was “a relatively bad number” because that “overwhelms the system.”

Imagine then how Johnson, a vital cog in President Obama’s easy-on-illegal-immigration administration, would evaluate the current border disaster, precipitated by President Biden’s refusal to enforce immigration law.

In July, Border Patrol detained 210,000 illegal aliens, 6,700 people each and every day. Broken down another way, the 210,000 represents 80,000 families, people in family units, and 20,000 unaccompanied minors, all record totals, but exclusive of the 37,000 that eluded capture.

Agents fear that, if anything, the totals are underrepresented because the incoming migrant flood is so great, they can’t account for all of them. In early July, for example, a group of 500 Haitians simultaneously swarmed the border. Instead of performing their professional duties, agents have been diverted to childcare tasks.

As terrible as the official numbers are, Andrew Arthur, a former House Judiciary counsel, retired immigration judge and currently a Center for Immigration Studies Law and Policy Senior Fellow, calculates that the true number of illegal aliens that have entered this year far exceeds the reported total. Arthur estimates that the actual year-to-date crossings total is 1.6 million, about equivalent to Philadelphia’s population.

After seven months in the White House, and despite horrible immigration polling, an issue that cost the Democrats the 2016 presidential election, the Biden administration just doesn’t care about voters’ opinions or how sustained open borders will alter sovereign nation America.

Like it or not, open borders are here to stay for the simplest reason. No one in the Biden administration, least of all the president and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, wants immigration laws enforced.

The law, 8 U.S. Code § 1225, is crystal clear on borders: aliens who do not have a legal right to be present in the U.S. “shall be detained pending a final determination of credible fear of persecution and, if found not to have such a fear, until removed.”

That is, as former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andrew McCarthy wrote, “even those who credibly claim to fear persecution if returned from whence they came – the infinitesimally small percentage of legitimate refugees among the hordes now seeking entry – are supposed to be held in custody until that claim is fully adjudicated.”

Analysts claim that today’s aliens represent tomorrow’s Democrat voters, an assumption that may be overly optimistic. Statistics show that, because Democrats have failed their traditional minority coalition, they’re trending conservative. Biden and the woke, progressive Congress offer nothing to those minorities to generate enthusiasm. Open borders directly harm blacks, Hispanics and other minorities – more job competition, overcrowded schools and more expensive housing are a few among the many challenges that importing millions of poor people represent to America’s struggling classes.

If anyone in the Biden administration were asked directly what tangible benefits open border provide to the average blue-collar American, he couldn’t provide an intelligent answer.

The New York Times recognizes the risks ahead for Democrats. An op-ed headline read, “Democrats Are Anxious about 2022 – and 2024,” and explained Hispanic and black voters’ defection from the party. A Democratic pollster speculated that the reason for the shift in minority voting patterns is “because Democrats don’t keep their word,” a reference to the party promising that better things are around the corner, but never delivering. Although the pollster didn’t admit the obvious, illegal aliens are prioritized over citizen minorities.

President Trump’s strong 2020 showing in Southwest border communities should set off alarm bells for Democrats. Zapata County is 93 percent Hispanic, and hasn’t voted Republican in a presidential race since it went for Warren G. Harding a century ago. In 2020, however, President Trump won the county, and performed strongly throughout the traditionally Democratic Rio Grande Valley.

Biden’s border fiasco is a strategic mistake that will damage Democrats in the 2022 mid-terms and beyond.

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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 federal government’s U.S. Drought Monitor indicates that nearly half the nation is suffering from abnormally dry drought conditions.

States in the West are the most adversely affected, but parts of the Midwest and the East are classified as experiencing extreme, severe or moderate drought. The Pacific Northwest has not seen a spring this dry since 1924, and this is the second driest March to June on record for Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

In California and Nevada, reservoirs are low, approaching 2012 to 2016 levels. Continued drying increases wildfire risk throughout the region, reflected in several recent out-of-control incidents in northern California, which has more than 200 vulnerable communities. The Dixie Fire, California’s second largest in the state’s history, destroyed iconic Greenville, burned hundreds of homes and forced evacuations in the adjacent 48,000 acres. As of August 8, Dixie has torched more than 463,000 acres and is only 21 percent contained.

Nevada and California, both states in 100 percent drought conditions that range from moderate to exceptional, had record warm temperatures in June which escalated the severe effects, including fire potential, water temperature impacts on fish and increased evaporative demand. Drought impacts on pasture conditions, ecosystem health, water supply, recreation and fire potential have intensified and expanded.

Just as the National Weather Service predicts no relief in sight, neither do population analysts foresee a reduction of the numbers of new arrivals that will drink, cook with, bathe in, irrigate or flush with the increasingly scarce water normally available for everyday activities.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked residents to voluntarily cut water use by 15 percent. Many but not all will comply. Posh resorts, golf clubs, baseball diamonds, college football fields as well as the rich and famous like the Kardashians likely won’t do their share. Post-pandemic California anticipates millions of visitors this summer season, and through 2023. Out-of-state tourists who pay an average $2,757 per week to visit California may take their 15-minute shower and opt for freshly laundered linens.

Whether California residents heed Newsom or whether visitors pay attention to their lodgings’ pleas to consume less water is beyond anyone’s control. But controlling the millions of future water consumers pouring across the Southwest border is well within the federal government’s power. At the current pace, by the end of his first year in office President Biden will have overseen and unconstitutionally sanctioned the unlawful entry of more than 2 million illegal immigrants. Add those 2 million to the autopilot annual 1 million lawful permanent residents and hundreds of thousands who arrive on employment-based visas but rarely return home, and more than 3 million new arrivals will join the country’s already overcrowded 330 million.

Here’s the simple formula: too many people will equal not enough water. Some areas have been dramatically hurt by too little water, and too rapid population growth. The Texas Commission on Environmental Equality found that since 1940 the population of the 10 largest sister cities that straddle the U.S.-Mexican border, an arid region already short of water, has exploded twentyfold, from 560,000 people to roughly 10 million today.

Without taking into consideration the ongoing border surge, the Census Bureau predicts that the nation’s mid-century population will exceed 400 million, a 25 percent increase from today’s level, and about 90 percent driven by immigrants and births to immigrants.

Don’t blame immigrants for the water crisis. The Biden administration graciously invited border crossers to live in the U.S., and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas facilitated their safe and orderly dispersal throughout the nation. After immigration officials apprehend the aliens, they’re released into the interior, often on charter flights. Eventually, they’ll receive the government’s full complement of affirmative benefits. Those who have come, and those who will continue to come. are here to stay. But the water that they’ll need can’t be manufactured.

The looming, acute water shortage will create a hard time for all, immigrants and citizens alike.

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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].

On July 29, Richard D. Lamm, Colorado’s three-term governor during the 1970s and 1980s, died of complications from a pulmonary embolism. He was a week away from his 86th birthday.

Lamm was a Democrat who earned his J.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, served in the U.S. Army and became an attorney for the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Commission. Once his third gubernatorial term ended, Lamm was executive director of the University of Denver’s Center for Public Policy, and wrote several books.

During his 12 years as Colorado’s governor, Lamm spoke out unflinchingly about the issues most important to him – protecting the fragile environment, defending women’s rights and promoting commonsense immigration. Lamm, who criticized overdevelopment and the relentless sprawl it spawns, opposed Interstate 470, a proposed circumferential highway around the Denver Metropolitan area. Years later, and because of never-ending development, the highway was built. Today, Denver has some of the nation’s most congested highways, and much of Colorado’s open spaces are a distant memory as housing projects have paved over what was once rural land. Lamm knew and loved Colorado’s countryside; in 1974, running on his campaign to limit growth, he walked across the state to promote his platform.

Because it adds millions of new residents to the U.S.’s population annually, Lamm, unlike many Democrats with similar academic and professional credentials, bluntly criticized federal immigration policy as ill-conceived, destructive to the environment and harmful to low-wage American workers.

In 2003, Lamm gave his most widely known speech, “I Have a Plan to Destroy America.” At the time of Lamm’s speech, Congress had passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, and the Immigration Act of 1990. Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had signed the two legislative acts that opened the borders to more illegal immigration, and created more employment-based visas that, over the last three decades, helped displace millions of American low- and high-skilled workers.

Presciently, Lamm foresaw immigration’s growing, detrimental effect on the U.S., as well as the amassed power that its advocates had on Congress and the media. Lamm’s eight-point program, which he subtitled “and many parts of it are underway,” include making America a bilingual, bicultural country and encouraging immigrants to maintain their own language and culture instead of, as previous immigrant waves did, assimilating.

Lamm’s most compelling point noted that all his observations must be treated as “off limits…taboo.” Make sure that opposition is squelched on unfounded xenophobe and racist charges that end debate. Because immigration was “once good,” Lamm predicted that its advocates would insist that it “must always be good.” Lamm anticipated that the immigration-related problems he identified in 2003 would grow worse over the years to come.

Although often at odds with Lamm, especially about immigration, the Denver Post’s editorial board wrote a mostly gracious commentary about the former governor, and referred to him as “a kind, humble and generous man…. a man of conviction… whose policy on immigration was drastically different from that of the modern Democratic Party.…”

I knew Dick from several Washington, D.C., conferences where we met, began and maintained a friendship. On a trip to Denver years ago, Dick and his wife, Dottie, invited me to their home for dinner. Dottie, once a Colorado U.S. Senate candidate, Dick and I spoke about his 2003 speech, and bemoaned how much of it had come true.

Dick enjoyed a long, full life. In an era where most politicians speak double talk or test which way the wind blows before addressing a crowd, Dick spoke his mind even when he knew his foes were ready to pounce. As the Post wrote: “Colorado will be poorer without him here offering his unvarnished and genuine takes on the most important policies of our time.”

Governor Lamm’s many allies in the uphill climb for stable, sustainable population and manageable immigration will deeply miss his strong, rational voice. The fierce battle that Dick predicted will be more challenging without him.

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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 perpetually offended scored another big win.

The venerable Cleveland Indians announced that next year their nickname will be the “Guardians,” a reference to two large landmark stone edifices near Progressive Field.

For the woke, the triumph isn’t quite on the scale of tumbling down or defacing statues of America’s founding fathers, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but the symbolism is identical.

Indians’ management claims that polling found that the Indians name generated deep dissatisfaction among its fan base. Maybe, but skeptics would like to see who was polled, and how the questions were phrased. In all probability, those questioned were progressive whites who are affronted with almost everything about America’s past.

Leading the anti-Indians charge was MLB’s meddlesome and super-woke commissioner, Rob Manfred. In a saccharine-sweet social media video complete with melodramatic music, Hollywood pitchman Tom Hanks introduced the Guardians.

On the Indians official website, the chief executives’ biographies appear. Paul Dolan, owner, chairman and chief executive officer has a University of Notre Dame J.D. degree. The second in command, Chris Antonetti, president of baseball operations, is a Georgetown University business administration magna cum laude graduate with a master’s degree in sports management from the University of Massachusetts.

Third in the Indians hierarchy, Brian Barren, is a Princeton University alum whose thesis analyzed MLB’s integration. After more than a year of brainstorming, in consultation with other high-powered Clevelanders, and checking in with focus groups, the extraordinarily well-educated Indians management could do no better than rebranding the team the “Guardians.” Only a herculean effort could produce a dumber name.

Some Indians fans hoped that management would reach back into the team’s deep, often unhappy past, and revive the “Spiders.” In 1899, the Spiders logged the worst record in baseball history, 20-134, a dismal performance that included losing 40 of 41 consecutive games. Other names the Indians could have selected, each better than the Guardians, include the old Cleveland-based Negro League teams: the Stars, the Elites or the Hornets.

The Indians have produced some of baseball’s greatest players, including Hall of Fame members Satchel Paige, Larry Doby, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, Tris Speaker and Bob Feller. One wonders what their take on the Guardians would be – an educated guess is that they would strongly oppose eliminating the Indians, and political correctness in general.

Take Feller, a no-non-sense guy. An unadulterated patriot, Feller would have been unlikely to immediately enlist in the Navy for World War II if he knew that 44 months later, he’d return to a woke America.

On December 7, 1941, Feller, in his spanking brand-new Buick Century with all the available extras – a heater and a radio – was driving toward Chicago to sign his new contract. At 24, Feller had notched 107 wins, and big money awaited him. Then, over the radio, Feller heard the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Feller drove on, and on December 9 enlisted in the Navy at a Chicago recruiting office, the first professional athlete to sign up for World War II combat.

When Feller looked back at his war experiences as gun captain, he said that he was constantly surrounded by scares and tragedies. The worst, Feller recalled, didn’t occur in battle, but rather when the USS Alabama was caught in week-long Typhoon Cobra whose 180 mph winds sunk three U.S. destroyers. The choppy waves made refueling impossible. More than 800 American sailors drowned or were eaten by sharks after their ships capsized in the storm. During his service, Feller earned six campaign ribbons and eight battle stars. Ironically, because he was attending to his cancer-stricken, dying father, Feller had a military deferment.

Not only did Feller pass up the big money that his 1943 contract offered him, but he sacrificed nearly four years of his pitching career. About players who served in the two World Wars and Korea, fans speculate what they might have achieved had they not lost key baseball years fighting to protect their country. Ralph Winnie, a Seattle baseball statistician, calculated that Feller would have won 107 more games which would have brought his career total up from 266 to 373, notched 1,070 additional strikeouts up to 3,651, pitched five no-hitters instead of three, and 19 one-hitters instead of 12.

Feller and the other Indians greats are fading from memory, and wokeness is accelerating their disappearance. The Indians have thrilled or disappointed Cleveland fans for 115 years, but Indians – deemed “racist” to the woke – had to go.

Dolan said that an “epiphany” motivated his decision to rebrand the Indians as the Guardians. But Dolan is listening to the wrong people. Feller was often asked what his greatest win was. Instead of answering that moment came when he threw an Opening Day no hitter, Feller unhesitatingly replied, “World War II.” Defending America, her history and her greatness was Feller’s proudest accomplishment. If they would only heed history’s lessons, therein lies a valuable lesson for the Indians’ management and the wokesters.

Tearing things down is easy. Building is much more difficult

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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].

In a move consistent with the Biden administration’s walk back of former President Donald Trump’s tougher immigration actions and guidelines, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would not pursue time limits on student F-1 visas.

Like virtually all of the dozens of visas available to foreign nationals through the federal government, the F-1 visa is wrought with fraud. When President Trump introduced his proposed restrictions, he said his administration was acting in the best interest of American students.

To support its claim that tighter oversight is necessary, the Trump administration gave an example of an international student who remained in the U.S. for 30 years while allegedly attending a dance school. President Trump could have referenced many more student visa fraud incidents.

In 2019, Immigration and Customs Enforcement indicted eight foreign nationals with conspiracy to commit student visa fraud. Going back to 2001, at least one of the 9/11 terrorists also entered on an F-1 visa, while others originally entered on different categories of non-immigrant temporary visas. Under Trump’s plan, most visas would expire after four years, even if the student needed more time to complete a degree – students born in several dozen countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa would be limited to two-year terms.

An F-1 visa doesn’t have a fixed expiration date, but is instead tied to the course of the study program’s ending date. Overstays are frequent, put students into unlawfully present immigration status and give them an easy opportunity to enter the underground employment market if they present, as many do, falsified job applications.

Some F-1 students studying science, technology, engineering and math may qualify for Optional Practical Training, a program that allows more than 250,000 foreign students to work in the U.S. at white-collar occupations for up to three years. The original intent of the student visa was abandoned long ago. Its purposed had been to offer an international resident an opportunity to get a U.S. degree, return home and then use the acquired knowledge to improve his home country. Today, student visas have, through OPT, morphed into a guest worker program.

The Biden administration defended its decision to terminate President Trump’s more restrictive guidelines by pointing to the comments made on the Federal Register, which said it had received overwhelmingly critical feedback. From the approximately 32,000 comments submitted, 99 percent were opposed.

As part of the big picture, however, 32,000 comments are insignificant. Each year, pre-pandemic, about 1.1 million international students enrolled in U.S. higher learning institutions. You can assume they would oppose more rigid regulations, as would thousands of university professors, administrators, immigration advocates and lawyers.

In its story titled, “The Biden Administration Won’t Pursue Fixed Time Limits on Student Visas,” The Wall Street Journal quoted immigration advocate Miriam Feldblum, the The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration’s executive director. Feldblum, who had previously opined that time limits would harm international students and the schools that want to enroll them, hailed Biden’s reversal.

Omitted from Feldblum’s statement is that universities profit handsomely from the higher tuition they receive from overseas students, who displace qualified U.S. kids whose parents have paid into the university system for decades. At the University of Virginia, for example, an in-state student pays $423 per credit while a non-Virginia resident pays more than three times that sum, $1,552.

No doubt having to occasionally renew status would be a nuisance. But when the international student considers the trade-off, the small effort is well worth the future benefits: a U.S. university diploma and the earnings potential it represents in exchange for additional administrative paperwork. If the prospective student finds the process too cumbersome, the international learner is not required in the U.S. Worldwide, more than 25,000 universities accept applications each and every year.

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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].