Cagle World

Lipman Emanuel (“Lip”) Pike was baseball’s first Jewish superstar and arguably the game’s first professional player.

“The Big Book of Jewish Baseball” wrote that in 1866 Pike agreed to accept $20 per week to play third base for the Philadelphia Athletics. Before he turned professional, Pike debuted with the Brooklyn Athletics in 1865, one of the 12 teams in two leagues he played for until 1887.

Ostensibly, the players were amateurs but many, including Pike, took money under the table. Whether or not Pike was the first professional is debatable but there’s no argument he had an impact on the game as a slugger.

Pike was also the first Jewish manager, having piloted the Troy Haymakers, the Hartford Dark Blues, and the Cincinnati Reds.

The son of a Jewish haberdasher of Dutch origin, Pike was born in New York City on May 25, 1845. He was one of five children in the family, which moved to Brooklyn when he was very young, and appeared in his first recorded game just one week after his bar mitzvah.

In the dead ball era, power is relative, since batted balls rarely left the infield. So, logically fans – or cranks as they were called in the 19th century – were agog when, in 1871, Pike tied the National Association record for homers with four. He wound up with 21 career homers and a .322 batting average.

Baseball scribes wrote that Pike possessed “great speed, a powerful if erratic throwing arm, and enormous power.” Early home run king Pike, known as the “Iron Batter,” hit 17.2 percent of all homers in the league in 1872, a number not bested until 1920 when the New York Yankees’ Babe Ruth broke the record with 20.07 percent.

Pike began playing at age 13 and made his name with the Athletics. In one game, Pike hit five home runs. Despite his home run hitting prowess, the Athletics dropped Pike from their roster. Since he was New York-born, Athletics officials considered Pike a “foreigner.” Whenever ownership deemed the Athletics play suspicious, as in thrown at gamblers’ behest, “foreigners” had been the most suspected of crooked play. Non-native Philadelphians’ loyalty to the Athletics was perpetually questioned.

Pike moved onto the New York Mutuals, and then to the Brooklyn Atlantics, where he hit an eye-popping .610. Baseball historians note that Pike, for all his prowess, benefited mightily from the dimensions of the parks he played in. Cincinnati’s Lake Front Park, for example, measured 180 feet down the left field line, and 196 down right.

For reasons unknown, the powerful Pike could never stay with one club for very long. He joined the Haymakers for its inaugural season and hit .377. By 1872, Pike went to the Baltimore Canaries where he put together three outstanding seasons and led the league in homers for the third straight season with four. Moreover, Pike consistently finished among the league’s top sluggers in total bases, hits, extra base hits, slugging, doubles, RBIs and stolen bases.

The Iron Batter’s most memorable feat occurred off the field. On a hot summer day in 1873, Pike won an unusual Baltimore sporting contest: he outran a racing horse named Clarence in a 100-yard dash contest, and took home $250, about $5,000 in today’s dollars.

Pike died of heart disease in 1893 at the young age of 48. The Sporting News wrote of Pike: “Pike was the center fielder of the Atlantics of Brooklyn in the latter’s palmiest days and as an all-round batsman, fielder and base runner he had few if any superiors. He was a left-handed batsman and, in his day, could hit the ball as hard as any man in the business. He was a right field hitter and during his career had sent balls over the right field fence of nearly every park in which he had played in.”

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Copyright 2024 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].

Through September 13, Vice President Kamala Harris has visited Pennsylvania twelve times, with most of her campaign stops happing in red counties that supported former President Donald Trump in 2020.

Harris’ mission is to acquaint voters with her qualifications and her views for the future. A September New York Times/Siena poll found nearly one-third of voters don’t know who Harris is.

Both Harris and Trump have focused on Pennsylvania, the swingiest swing state in a tight presidential election. Between the two, they’ve visited the Commonwealth two dozen times, excluding stand-alone visits from the respective running mates, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.

Earlier this month, Harris landed at John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria Airport in western Pennsylvania. Johnstown is a small city within Cambria County, which voted for Trump over Biden 68% to 31%. On another stop in Wilkes-Barre, part of Luzerne County, Harris, for the first time, pledged to lower the standards for federal government employment. The 2020 election results showed that in Wilkes-Barre Trump defeated Biden by a 57% to 42% margin. Those are powerful margins that Harris would have to overcome to cut into Trump’s popularity.

Harris doubled down on her economic opportunity and pro-small business agenda. If elected, Harris promised to eliminate the “unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs and increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree, understanding that requiring a certain degree does not necessarily talk about one’s skills.” Instead, Harris called for alternative pathways to good-paying jobs like apprenticeships and vocational training or adult education.

Voters who have been casting ballots since the Clinton administration recognize Harris’ promises as empty. President Bill Clinton created GEAR UP, a 1998 program designed to help high-school students better prepare for the professional world. The Department of Education squandered millions on the failed program. In a corporate world that relies heavily on technology, specifically the STEM occupations – science, technology, engineering, and math – a vocational school diploma will rarely replace a college degree.

Then, touting her credentials as the former California Attorney General, Harris pointed to “transnational” cartels, and said, “I know these cartels firsthand, and as president, I will make sure we prosecute them to the full extent of the law for pushing poison like fentanyl on our children.”

In 2022, around 73,838 people in the United States died from a drug overdose that involved fentanyl, the highest number of fentanyl overdose deaths ever recorded, and a significant increase from the 36,319 reported in 2019, just weeks from President Joe Biden’s and Harris’ inauguration. Their open border agenda began immediately. Fentanyl overdoses are the driving force behind the opioid epidemic, accounting for the majority of U.S. overdose fatalities.

Curbing fentanyl deaths is an action Harris, the so called “Border Czar,” could do today if she enforced immigration laws which would prevent cartels and other illegal aliens from entering the nation without inspection. Of all of Harris’ hollow promises, none is less convincing than her vow to prosecute drug cartels.

As Harris moves along in her campaign from swing state to swing state, drug traffickers are crossing the Southwest border daily and pushing their deadly drugs into American communities like Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre.

In Pennsylvania, overdose deaths rose by 16.4% in 2020 and continued rising to 5,438 reported overdose deaths in 2021, a 6% year-over-year increase. Expressed in starker terms, an average of 15 Pennsylvanians died each and every day of a drug overdose in the last year.

Harris has failed at her most important duty – to keep America safe.

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Copyright 2024 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Viewers who tuned in to the highly anticipated debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris left disappointed.

Harris’ supporters wished she had taken the opportunity to clear up why she has U-turned on so many issues like fracking, the border wall, universal health care, and her mandatory gun buy-back program. The pro-Harris contingent would also like to have seen their preferred presidential choice face the tough questions more forthrightly rather than bob and weave, a show of weakness when what’s required of a president is strength.

ABC Co-host David Muir posed the first question to Harris: “…are you better off than you were four years ago? When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?” Harris completely dodged the question and instead launched into a long non-response that included references to her middle-class upbringing, her plan for an “opportunity economy,” and her “love for small businesses.” Such an abstract reply that evaded the question entirely converted no on-the-fence voters.

The pro-Trumpers hoped the former president would have consistently reverted to Americans’ top two concerns – jobs and the economy – issues which polls consistently show him comfortably leading Harris.

Instead of hammering Harris with hard data about his strengths, Trump got suckered into silly back and forth squabbling about whose campaign events drew larger audiences or defending his behavior on Jan. 6, 2021, which a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

A survey that Pew Research conducted found that Jan. 6 does not appear in any of Americans top sixteen concerns. The same poll showed probable voters felt that the GOP was more likely to resolve what they considered “very big problems” like inflation, illegal immigration, international terrorism, and violent crime. Moderators Muir and Linsey Davis asked only a handful of immigration-related questions. In all, slightly more than five minutes was spent discussing immigration even though it worsens a host of serious problems like a weak economy, education, housing, and crime.

Trump failed to bring the economy back into his spotlight, even though the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports provide him with ample fodder. Measuring average hourly earnings from February of the first year of each presidency through July of their fourth year, specifically wage gains for production and non-supervisory workers, Trump’s gains were 6.54%; Biden-Harris gains, 0.00%. What’s more, immigration-driven population growth has displaced American workers or helped prevent recent college graduates from entering the work force. Foreign-born workers as a percentage of all employment under Trump, 17.4%; under Biden-Harris, 19.6%. Under Trump, foreign-born employment growth increased 7.5%; under Biden-Harris, 14.2%.

Another voters’ worry: inflation. Cumulative inflation during Trump’s administration was 5.9%, while in the Biden-Harris White House it’s 19%.

Harris exceeded her low expectations, and Trump missed several opportunities to put distance between him and his rival. Having to debate not only Harris but the meddlesome moderators Muir and Davis, Trump had to deal with three rivals at once. Muir and Davis continuously fact checked Trump but let Harris’ misstatements stand, unchallenged.

Trump, who won the pre-debate coin flip, chose to deliver the last words. He asked why Harris, during her 3-1/2 years in the White House, had not accomplished “all the wonderful” things she promised to do during the debate. Harris could, Trump noted, proceed directly back to the White House and “do the things you [said] want to do.”

When the debate ended, Harris’ team emailed the Trump camp to ask for a second debate. Trump waffled, claimed that he won the Philadelphia face off, and said “Let’s see what happens.”

Vice presidential residential candidates Tim Walz and J.D. Vance will face off on October 1. Here’s hoping their debate is more informative.

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Copyright 2024 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Journalist Studs Terkel, who wrote “Working,” the classic oral history of Americans’ on-the-job lives, called Marvin Miller “the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis.”

Miller, the United Mine Workers president for forty years and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ founder, took over a failing group that represented the nation’s most exploited but irreplaceable workers – the Major League Baseball Players Association – and converted it into the country’s most powerful union.

Miller’s introduction to labor negotiations came when he worked in the early 1950s for the United States Steel Workers Association, who along with the United Auto Workers represented America’s union strength. But an internal shake-up prompted Miller to seek new employment. He turned down a faculty position at Harvard University when Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts asked him to consider becoming the executive director of the player’s union.

But getting the job wasn’t easy.

Team owners hoped that by repeatedly stalling they would force Miller, who still had no fixed plan to fund the union, to give up. Owners also tried to persuade unconvinced players Miller would lead them into a strike few of them could afford. Their heavy-handedness infuriated the players, who unified their support behind Miller and unanimously elected him as their union’s executive director in 1966.

By 1968, Miller had negotiated the union’s first collective bargaining agreement with team owners, which won the players a whopping increase in their minimum salary from $7,000 to $10,000 plus larger expense allowances that covered the 1968 and 1969 seasons. Miller advised superstar outfielder Curt Flood in the historic 1972 Flood vs Kuhn case which reached the Supreme Court. At stake was coveted free agency. The court ruled against Flood 5-3-1, but his lawsuit opened the door for other MLB players to challenge the reserve clause.

On December 23rd, 1975, Peter Seitz, the neutral arbitrator, awarded Major League Baseball players – both present and future – the greatest Christmas present they would ever receive. He ruled that clause 10(a) of a player’s contract, reserving an unsigned player to his current team, was only valid for one year. After that, a ballplayer could become a free agent if the contract remained unsigned. Free agency, resulting from the 1974 case of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Andy Messersmith and the Baltimore Orioles’ Dave McNally, whom Miller encouraged to sit out a year, was on the horizon. After filing a grievance, Messersmith and McNally won free agency and signed new contracts with the Atlanta Braves and the Montreal Expos.

During Miller’s tenure, baseball suffered through strikes and lockouts that angered fans. But the average player’s annual salary rose from $19,000 in 1966 to $326,000 in 1982, the year Miller left the player’s union. Miller died in 2012 and didn’t live long enough to see the explosion in player salaries. In 2024, Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way player, Shohei Ohtani will earn $70 million, the average player salary is $5 million, and the minimum player income is $750,000.

After being rejected six times in Hall of Fame voting – four times by the Veterans Committee, and twice by the Expansion Era Committee, both dominated by owners and baseball executives. In 2008, four years before his death at age 95, Miller told the Boston Globe he held the Hall of Fame in contempt and was indifferent to his induction. Calling the vote “rigged” and the members “handpicked to reach a particular outcome,” Miller said, “At age 91, I can do without the farce.”

Thankfully, the Modern Baseball Era Committee inducted Miller into the Hall of Fame in 2020.

Miller was among baseball’s three most impactful figures, sharing the honor with Babe Ruth, who changed the way the game is played and Jackie Robinson, who paved the way for black players to enter the Major Leagues.

Not bad company.

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Copyright 2024 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 political history’s most remarkable U-turn, Vice President Kamala Harris – the Democrat’s presidential candidate – has converted into a tough on border security advocate. She pledges to hire thousands more border agents, to defeat drug cartels and to jail gun smugglers. A new ad the Harris campaign released nationwide concludes with this line: “Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.”

The spot is so brazenly dishonest and such a shameless insult to voters’ intelligence that even the most grizzled, cynical political observers are taken aback.

Under her watch, millions of illegal aliens have crossed the border unchecked and disrupted communities into which they have resettled. Her home city of San Francisco, where she served as District Attorney, and California, where she was the Attorney General and the senior U.S. Senator, are crime infested messes.

Harris’ problem is her congressional voting record betrays her campaign promises. She cast seven votes against bills that would have strengthened border security. And Harris’ votes on interior enforcement reflected her disdain for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency she compared to the KKK and wants to abolish.

On 21 occasions, Harris voted for bills that would weaken interior enforcement including legislation to end sanctuary cities. Harris also opposed using 287 (g), the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) program to partner with state and local law enforcement agencies to identify and remove incarcerated criminal noncitizens. A sampling of her votes:

– In 2017, Harris cosponsored S. 1615, the Dream Act of 2017, that would grant amnesty to about three million illegal immigrants, the so-called DREAMers.

– In 2017, Harris cosponsored S. 845, the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act which prevents federal immigration agents from detaining illegal aliens in certain public places.

– In 2018, Harris voted for Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) amendment to grant amnesty to 3.2 million illegal aliens, again the DREAMer population.

– In 2019, Harris cosponsored S. 175, the Agricultural Worker Program Act. The legislation would have granted amnesty to approximately 3 million agricultural workers. Harris voted against an amendment offered by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) that would block federal grants to sanctuary districts, which protect illegal alien criminals that otherwise would be prosecuted.

– As a 2020 presidential candidate, Harris promised to amnesty six million illegal aliens through executive action, if necessary.

Harris is trying to recast herself as having evolved from extreme immigration positions that are out of step with American voters. She has not, however, softened her amnesty advocacy. With her vice presidential choice, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democrat ticket has doubled down on amnesty. In 2021, Walz wrote to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to urge that millions of illegal immigrants be put on a pathway to citizenship.

But Harris cannot escape the indisputable fact that, over several years, she has made countless statements and cast dozens of votes that oppose enforcement and support illegal immigration. With her tacit blessing, millions have entered, including ninety-nine on the terrorist watch list that the Department of Homeland Security released into the interior. A House Judiciary Committee report found that at least 27 on the terrorist watchlist who came through the southwest border and were bonded out by immigration judges. At least four other terrorists were granted asylum. Moreover, during FY 2024, border patrol has encountered tens of thousands of illegal aliens nationwide from countries that could present national security risks, including 2,134 Afghan nationals, 33,347 Chinese nationals, 541 Iranian nationals, 520 Syrian nationals, and 3,104 Uzbek nationals.

Harris was also one of only four Democrats who co-sponsored the Immigration Enforcement Moratorium Act, legislation that would prevent DHS from deporting the worst of the worst criminals – murders, child molesters and rapists.

Harris was Biden’s partner in every failed policy he initiated. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre emphasized to reporters during a recent briefing how “aligned” Biden and Harris have been throughout the president’s term and how the vice president has been a “critical part” of all the president’s decision-making.

Biden is not on the ticket; he’s been deposed. But Harris’ border policies are identical to her former boss’. No one wants four more years of mass illegal immigration.

In March 2021, Biden appointed Harris his border czar, or, in his words, he asked his vice president to lead the administration’s efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — countries that will: “need help stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.” Harris shirked that responsibility and let illegal immigration run wild.

Harris will try to hide from voters the devastating affects her negligence had on U.S. communities, but that goal will be a major challenge for her candidacy.

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Copyright 2024 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Throughout her career, Kamala Harris has benefited from the support of friends in high places. Michelle and Barack Obama’s recent endorsement of Harris for president is just the latest example.

Looking back, Harris’ political ascendancy is directly tied to her two-year dalliance with Willie Brown in the 1990s while he was Speaker of the California Assembly. The speakership is one of the state’s most powerful positions, which controls the legislative flow of bills that either do or don’t reach the governor’s desk. Married but separated, Brown was twice Harris’ age; he was 60 while she was just 29.

Brown appointed Harris to two coveted state panels, but his most valuable favors were to connect Harris to the Democrat party’s elites and deep-pocketed donors. Brown also actively promoted Harris’ campaigns, first for San Francisco attorney general, then California’s attorney general, and finally the U.S. Senate in 2016.

Immediately after her victory in one-party California, the always-friendly media began touting her as 2020 presidential timber. Harris’ announcement that she would compete for the presidential nomination originally generated enthusiasm, but the excitement soon fizzled out; Harris’ campaign was a complete bust. Her abrasive personality created constant staff turnover, and Harris dropped out without winning a single delegate. She blamed her failure on the lack of financial resources, which translates to an inability to convince donors that she would be a winner.

Harris is in the midst of a lovefest with the media which is furiously withholding the truth about her radical left record which, according to GovTrack. earned her the dubious most liberal senator title – further left than even Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Shortly after Harris entered the 2024 presidential race by default, GovTrack took its ranking down, one of the many coverups that will mark her presidential quest.

GovTrack’s trickery aside, the Internet is packed with her radical statements that include endorsing the American Families Plan, a nearly $2 trillion pre-K childcare package, and being an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. She also offered free four-year public college education for low-and middle income American students, continued funding for the unwinnable Ukraine-Russia war, pushed Medicare for all including illegal aliens, supported decriminalizing illegal immigration and maintaining sanctuary cities’ status, snd called for an end to the death penalty.

While she likes to portray herself as tough on crime, four months after Harris was sworn in as California’s attorney general in 2004, gang member David Hill shot and killed police Officer Isaac Espinoza. Harris declined to charge the shooter with a capital offense, thus sparing him from the death penalty. Her decision rankled California’s political leadership, including California’s senior Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who called for Hill’s execution.

Harris, a San Francisco progressive, will have to do some slick talking to wiggle out of her advocacy for those costly and unpopular political proposals. On immigration and the border, however, Harris has no escape route.

To make Harris more palatable to middle-of-the-road voters, her supporters insist she was never the “border czar.” They falsely claim Biden tasked her with identifying the root causes for the invasion. As the old political axiom goes, when candidates are explaining, they are losing. The indisputable fact remains that Harris never went to the border, had unproductive meetings with Northern Triangle leaders, and stood by to watch illegal immigration overwhelm major U.S. metropolises with murder, mayhem and fentanyl deaths.

The root cause for illegal aliens’ journey north is Biden’s and Harris’ refusal to enforce immigration law.

Even conservative media has done a dismal job reporting on the criminality inherent in open borders. To allow and encourage illegal immigration, as Biden and Harris have, violates the Constitution and is an impeachable offense. During the three and a half years of keeping the border open to a global influx of illegal aliens and rewarding them with work permission and other perks, Biden, Harris and Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas have initiated America’s demographic overhaul which would continue with a four-year Harris term.

Harris recommends that, to solve the border fiasco, illegal aliens residing in the U.S. be given “a meaningful path to citizenship” – an amnesty which would mean more chain migration. Princeton University scholars calculated that when immigrants become citizens, they petition on average three family members to join them in the U.S. They will either grow their existing families or start new ones, which means more urban sprawl, more natural resources depleted, and more competition for affirmative benefits.

Polling consistently shows that immigration is voters’ top concern. Harris’ election would mean four more years of the same open borders and the associated violent crime that has plagued the nation since Biden entered the White House.

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Copyright 2024 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Every day for the last ten years, I’ve given daily thanks that I grew up when I did, in Los Angeles County of the 1950s, at that time one of the nation’s leading agricultural producers. Those wonderful days are long-gone and will never return.

Compared to today and considering the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, I have difficulty believing that such a time and place ever existed in America.

I’ve lived through many presidential elections where hostility between the Republican and Democratic candidates ran high. But the rhetoric that one candidate and his media supporters directed at the opposition never reached the level that the Democrats have attained against Trump.

Through his infamous Daisy ad, 1964 incumbent Lyndon Johnson inferred that his opponent, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, would drop a nuclear bomb to end the Vietnam War. Goldwater’s name didn’t appear in the ad. Johnson’s campaign portrayed Goldwater as an unstable extremist, not only because of his Vietnam position but also for his opposition to the Civil Rights Act and for his support of a voluntary Social Security system. In private, Johnson called Goldwater “nutty as a fruitcake” while, at the same time, he projected himself “as this source of order and calm and composure” who would “keep everyone safe.” Johnson didn’t publicly direct personal attacks on Goldwater’s character.

Roughly 40 million Americans saw the “Daisy” ad the first time it aired and that, thanks to replays, 100 million Americans had viewed it by the end of the first week it aired. The spot was a long way from Eisenhower’s 1952 and 1956 tame “I like Ike” spots. In television’s ancient days, only three channels existed, ABC, CBS and NBC. To get the same market penetration today, advertising experts estimate that television stations would have to show Johnson’s ad 1,000 times. Because of lingering sympathy for the assassinated John F. Kennedy, Johnson was considered a shoo-in. But he exceeded expectations, winning the election in a blowout. The Democrats also gained congressional seats which gave Johnson a mandate to push forward with his war on poverty and his Great Society agenda

Johnson’s success encouraged more aggressive political spots, but again they centered on issues, not personalities. In 1972, with the nation’s citizenry still conflicted about Vietnam, President Richard Nixon’s campaign produced the “McGovern Defense” ad which pictured the Democratic challenger as weak on national defense. Nixon won in a landslide. In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran on “Morning in America” which promised voters that his administration would end rampant crime, high taxes, and double-digit inflation. Reagan’s victory over the incumbent Carter was an electoral vote rout.

These were victories achieved on policy, not character assassination.

Significant parallels exist between Reagan and Trump. Both were outsiders, not part of the D.C. establishment, and Republicans. When inaugurated, Reagan was two weeks shy of his 70th birthday, the oldest elected president until Trump, age 70 years, 220 days defeated Hillary Clinton. Both barely survived when would-be assassins shot them. Four months after Reagan’s inauguration, a deranged John Hinckley, Jr, shot the president in the chest.

The presidential elections I’ve observed have been largely devoid of the vicious invective that has been a cornerstone of Biden’s administration and especially his re-election campaign. Trump’s rivals have tried to neutralize him through impeachment and lawfare.

For months, politicians, the media and talking heads have escalated reckless rhetoric. That includes claims that Trump is an authoritarian fascist, determined to kill democracy, unleash death squads and make homosexuals and reporters “disappear.” The media routinely suggests that Trump is a Super-Hitler, the embodiment of everything evil. He must be stopped, demand his detractors, while the media fails to press Biden on his false statements on immigration, the border, and so many other topics.

Biden has stoked rage with his irresponsible oratory. In 2022, Biden delivered a vicious speech in Independence Hall where he vilified nearly half the nation, Trump supporters, as enemies of the people. He said: “MAGA forces are determined to take the country backward…Trump is a clear and present danger to democracy.” Biden recently referenced the Independence Hall speech and has embraced the claims that 2024 could be the nation’s last democratic election. Instead of outlining his vision for America’s future, he’s unrelentingly maligned Trump. The suspected assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was 20 and had been listening to anti-Trump hysteria for half his adult life.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, no fan of his former boss, said “the Democrats have to stop their grossly irresponsible talk about Trump being an existential threat to democracy. He is not.” Toning things down wouldn’t be hard. Journalists should adhere to their profession’s standards of fairness and balance. Candidates for high office should tell the public what their vision for the future is and how they would achieve it.

Nearly four months remain until the November election, time enough to change course and embark on civility while campaigning.

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Copyright 2024 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

The uncertainty that engulfed the Democratic Party after CNN’s presidential debate is the type of chaos that Las Vegas’ bookmakers thrive on.

Shortly after President Biden’s disappointing-to-party-elders performance, the odds against his November re-election soared. Should Biden withdraw or the party mount a successful effort to take him off the ballot, moving up the charts as possible replacements are, in the order that Las Vegas oddsmakers list them, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Vice President Kamala Harris, former first lady Michelle Obama, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Las Vegas insiders are rarely wrong, but their odds on Newsom should be much higher. During his time on the campaign trail, which would only last a few months until the November election, Newsom would have no accomplishments to point to as inducements to gain national voter support.

Democratic power brokers who might support Newsom would have to consider California’s huge budget problem. Newsom recently announced a $26.7 billion deficit. Two years ago, California had a $97.5 billion surplus, meaning that over a two-year period, the state had a minus $124.2 billion swing into red ink.

Newsom raised the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour. Wage inflation spread to other service areas, made food less affordable to the poor, and led to 10,000 workers losing their jobs. Rubio’s California Grill, famous for its fish tacos, closed 48 of its nearly 134 locations at the end of May, the first major chain to fall victim to the new law that raised the minimum wage. The San Diego-based company cited the “rising cost of doing business” in the state for its closures.

A huge variable in businesses’ overhead is gasoline costs. Californians pay 60 cents a gallon in gasoline tax, the nation’s highest, which brings the current total per gallon price to a $4.79 state-wide average.

If voters cast ballots on negatives, then Newsom would win in a landslide.

In his State of the State address, Newsom touted the state’s job growth, but a new report from California’s state-funded, non-partisan Legislative Analysts’ Office found the state’s private sector employment has been collapsing since 2022. Public sector hiring accounted for the entire state net increase in jobs. Since California’s peak labor market hiring in September 2022, the private sector lost 154,000 jobs and the public-supported sector gained 361,000 jobs. Net, the state’s 207,000 employment increase since September 2022 has been from growing government-related hiring.

Twenty-seven percent of Californians are foreign-born, a total that, because of Newsom’s welcoming, sanctuary state illegal immigration policy, is on the rise. Earlier this year, Newsom announced that California would begin providing health care coverage to an additional 764,000 illegal immigrants on top of the 1.1 million already in the Medi-Cal system, the state’s version of Medicaid. More than one-third of California’s 39 million population is enrolled in Medi-Cal. California has been incrementally adding illegal immigrants to the Medi-Cal program since 2015, the year it made illegal alien children eligible. Four years later, Medi-Cal added illegal immigrant adults aged fifty and older.

Now California is a hot spot for illegal aliens’ entry. Since Texas has effectively deterred illegal immigration, aliens have discovered the San Diego corridor. Illegal immigrants know that San Diego is the easiest and least dangerous location to cross. Jacumba Hot Springs, a town of 540 people, has seen record high numbers of Chinese nationals cross, part of a nationwide pattern which has grown exponentially year-over-year. Between October 2023 and May 2024, crossers numbered 55,922, surpassing the entire 2023 fiscal year’s 52,700 total.

Shadow candidate Newsom knows that Biden’s open borders are voters’ top concern. Trying to portray himself as tough on illegal immigration, Newsom claimed that he had ordered a doubling of national guard troops to the California-Mexico border. But in Jacumba, national correspondents on location said that they had not seen any California National Guard troops, a statement that Customs and Border Patrol officials confirmed.

The Democratic National Convention, scheduled for August 19-22, is about six weeks away. Right now, Biden is determined to remain in the race. Forcibly replacing him would be difficult.

California is symbolic of how quickly incompetent leadership can destroy a great state. And Newsom, who has pushed out millions of productive but frustrated, overtaxed, and underserved middle-class residents and replaced them with illegal immigrants, is the governor that helped wreck the state.

Realistically, Biden’s a long shot to remain in the White House, but he has a better chance to beat Donald Trump than Newsom.

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Copyright 2024 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Canada faces an immigration crisis on multiple levels.

Years of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s endorsed over-immigration into Canada have pushed housing prices into the stratosphere, sent per capita income into a tailspin, and precipitated a brain-drain to the U.S.

While skilled or semi-skilled Canadians are headed south, the millions of illegal aliens who have entered the U.S. in the last three years will head north should Donald Trump win the 2024 election.

By lowering its immigration standards, Canada created insurmountable obstacles. Foreign nationals arriving on student visas are the biggest driver of Canada’s dramatic population growth. Student visa holders, many of whom obtain diplomas from uncredited schools, are eligible for a Canadian green card within 3 years; at the fourth year they can apply for citizenship assuming they have met permanent residency requirements.

Canada’s current population is 42 million, with immigration the biggest contributor. From 2016 to 2021, Canada’s population grew at almost twice the pace of every other G7 country. While growth slowed in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it rose again in 2021 and, from January to March 2022, it was the highest of all first quarters since 1990.

Canada is bracing for a much larger immigration-fueled population spike. Official Statistics Canada, a government agency, projected in 2022 that “the Canadian population would reach 47.7 million in 2041, and 25.0 million of them would be immigrants or children of immigrants born in Canada, accounting for 52.4% of the total population…Canada’s population may reach…between 44.9 million and 74.0 million in 2068, according to the various projection scenarios.”

Over-immigration has created a Canadian housing affordability crisis. Demand for housing far outstrips supply.

An exposé published by The Canadian Press revealed that federal public employees warned government officials two years ago that large increases to immigration could negatively affect housing affordability and services. Documents obtained by The Canadian Press through an access-to-information request showed that, as it prepared its immigration targets for 2023-2025, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada analyzed but ignored the potential consequences immigration would have on the economy, housing and services.

Canada’s population increased by more than 430,000 during the third quarter of 2023, marking the fastest pace of population growth in any quarter since 1957. Mikal Skuterud, a University of Waterloo economics professor who specializes in immigration policy, said the federal government appears to have “lost control” of temporary migration flows, a reference to the student visa holders and migrant workers influx.

Unchecked immigration and the fallout that followed in terms of increased housing prices and decreased per capita income has sent native-born and immigrants to Canada fleeing to the U.S. In 2022, a record 126,340 moved to the U.S., a 70% increase from 2012.

While workers are leaving Canada in droves, former U.S. ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman told a national security conference on June 3 that if Trump wins in November, “These people [U.S. illegal immigrants] aren’t just going to sit there and wait to be rounded up.” Should Trump win, Heyman said, they will immediately begin making plans to leave, and they will not go south, but north.

Like their U.S. expansionists’ soulmates, Canadian advocates like to parrot that more immigration lifts GDP, true but deceptive, and not the major factor in quality of life. More immigrants – more people – automatically creates a larger economy but depresses per capita income. If population growth drove economic growth, then countries like Canada and Australia that have among the highest rates of immigration and resulting population growth should vastly outpace a country like Japan, which has relatively little immigration and whose population actually declined over the last decade. Canada’s GDP per capita has fallen 0.4 per cent a year since 2020, the worst rate among 50 developed economies.

Immigration has been Canada’s downfall and proves how foolish and wrong Congress’ immigration cabal is consistently.

In July 2021, the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship met. Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) wailed that the U.S. urgently needs to overhaul its “failed” immigration laws or risk losing “highly skilled” employees to Canada. Countering, Ranking Member Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), more rationally said: “Canada’s pre-pandemic GDP growth was 39 percent lower than the United States; their unemployment rate 60 percent higher; and their average wages 38 percent lower.”

Lofgren embarrassingly and, as an immigration lawyer, purposely tried to mislead the public. Today, three years later, Canadians flock to the U.S. where, to their disappointment, they will find widespread IT layoffs. In April alone, 50 organizations including Google, Microsoft, and Tesla laid off 21,473 tech workers.

The harsh, inescapable truth is that too much immigration – the excesses plaguing the U.S. and Canada – hurts the native-born economically and societally.

In U.S. pre-election polling, immigration consistently ranks as voters’ major issue. Even though sovereign Canada and America are crushed under its burden, nothing stops both governments’ insatiable quest for more immigration.

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Copyright 2024 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Journalists who cover the immigration beat have a maxim: “Never say you’ve been witness to every conceivable violation of immigration law; you’ll soon be proven wrong.”

In her relatively short two-and-a-half-year period as Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu has, with her outrageous anti-public safety positions, alienated large swaths of her constituents and established a new low for wokeness, a dubious distinction considering how extreme political correctness has devastated the country.

In 2013, Bostonians elected Wu to the City Council. By 2018, she had easily ascended to City Council president. When the 2021 mayoral election rolled around, Wu was an established Boston darling. After filling out Progressive Massachusetts’ “2021 Boston Mayoral Candidate Questionnaire,” the Boston electorate had no doubts about Wu’s soft-on-crime agenda. Progressive Massachusetts’ identifies as an organization that “intends to transform Massachusetts into a bold laboratory for progressive state initiatives.”

Bostonians cannot be surprised then when Wu kept her promise to radicalize their city.

Wu has been ripped over her tone-deaf and frivolous plan to give kids as young as 11 and illegal aliens voting rights when it comes time to decide how millions of dollars in public funds are doled out. The city’s new proposed participatory budget voting process, which will go into effect in July, gives ordinary Bostonians the ability to decide how a portion of the city’s budget will be spent, the Boston Herald reported.

Last month, during a committee hearing reviewing Wu’s fiscal year 2025 budget, City Councilor Ed Flynn, a Democrat, slammed the mayor’s proposed new process, specifically the involvement of children and illegal aliens. Flynn also aired his grievances in a letter to the Office of Participatory Budgeting’s director, Renato Castelo, in which he flagged his “unequivocal and vehement opposition” to the looming process.

“During this time of great fiscal uncertainty — with a study warning that remote work policies and the city’s declining commercial property values may cost us $500 million in revenue annually, as well as a subsequent proposal to also tax commercial property at a higher rate — now more than ever, it is critical that we show the taxpayers of Boston that we take our financial responsibilities seriously,” Flynn wrote. “Allowing children [and illegal aliens] to decide the usage of taxpayer dollars would do just the opposite, and be viewed as tone-deaf, unserious and wholly inappropriate by my constituents.”

Boston reportedly has 672,000 residents with 28.2% being foreign-born, according to the city website.

The Boston Policy Institute confirmed Flynn’s grim outlook on Wu’s potentially crushing problems. In its analysis, the institute concluded Boston is likely to face a cumulative revenue shortfall of more than $1 billion in the next five years, and with no clear prospect for recovery, budgetary deficits could persist for decades, triggering a long-term decline in public services and economic vitality. Boston has few ways to compensate for lost tax revenue. Massachusetts precludes cities from introducing local sales and income taxes; fully offsetting the decline in commercial real estate would require a 25 percent to 30 percent increase in residential property taxes.

The illegal alien population that Wu is eager to grant voting privileges has taken over Boston’s predominantly Black Roxbury neighborhood. Thanks to President Joe Biden’s open border agenda and Wu’s collaboration, Roxbury has lost its community recreation center. More illegal alien arrivals and therefore more Boston citizen displacement goes on every hour of every day.

The numbers of migrants being housed at Logan Airport often spike to more than 100. Envision the mess Boston will be after illegal immigrants cast votes that will, with Wu’s blessing, determine the city’s financial future.

For now, Wu’s push to legalize dozens of previously punishable crimes, as well as promoting voting privileges for illegal aliens and sixth graders put her in undisputed first place for the mayor who has consistently proven that she has no regard for Bostonians’ personal safety.

Wu’s other and more compelling problem is that violating 8 U.S. Code § 1324 – “Bringing in and harboring certain aliens,” is a felony. Wu is clearly guilty of harboring, not that anyone in the Department of Justice cares.

In anticipation of the 2025 election, Wu’s critics have launched a “Save Our City” campaign. The scuttlebutt about who, if anyone, would be willing to face Wu has already started. Some speculate that Wu’s greatest challenge may come from the left, a move toward governance that Boston could not survive in any form that John F. Kennedy could recognize.

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Copyright 2024 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].