A Cold, Dark Winter Ahead?

As the calendar turns to September temperatures will begin to cool in the Northern Hemisphere.

There is no place in the world that this transition bears watching more closely than Europe.

Energy costs in Europe have soared as the promise of a "green" future has met the stark reality that there is no ready replacement for fossil fuels.

We will soon see what price Europe pays for betting big on that "green" future, while neglecting fossil fuel exploration, and putting most of its reliance on Russia to provide the oil and natural gas required to power their society and economy.

After all, energy exploration is a dirty business and few European countries were interested in getting themselves dirty doing it. 

The problem is that having access to efficient and affordable energy is inextricably tied to economic sustainability and growth.

The "greens" like to talk about sustainability but the truth is that almost nothing is sustainable if you do not have the energy to power your society.

There is a clear and unmistakable relationship between energy and the economy.

Energy makes the world economy go. We need it for anything we want to do. It needs to be available and it needs to be affordable. The economy does not work without energy. The consumer cannot spend on other things in the economy if they are spending excessive amounts on energy. If the consumer doesn't spend, the economy does not grow. If the economy does not grow, more and more people go without jobs.

If you doubt there is a relationship between affordable, available energy and economic growth consider this chart that compares world GDP growth with energy consumption growth over the last 200 years. 

Could there be a better correlation?

Credit:Mike Haseler

This chart was produced by Climate Scientist Mike Haseler who writes a blog named the Scottish Sceptic. Haseler points out that this relationship exists because GDP is the sum total of what humans produce. 

When muscle power was the prime energy source in the world we could produce very little. Firewood and domesticated animals improved our ability to produce. However, the introduction of energy sources like coal, oil and gas allowed us to greatly leverage our productive capacity. 

Compare the increase in GDP beginning around 1900 as oil and gas was discovered and deployed widely and the explosive growth of GDP after WW II as this development spread around the world after WW II.

What is going on right now in Europe with electricity prices?

The map below shows average day-ahead market prices in various European countries on August 29, 2022.

For context, two years ago the average price was about 50 Euros per MWh.

This graph from Bloomberg gives you some perspective on day-ahead wholesale electricity prices in the UK since 2010.

The UK is at about 600 Euros per MWh today.

France, Italy, Austria and Hungary are now over 700 Euros per MWh.

Germany is getting close to that number.

Credit: https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1564147030955593728/photo/1

 

Electricity costs up more more than 10 fold in two years?

This simply is not sustainable.

The entire economic system is not built with these types of costs in the equation.

Something has to give.

Right now it is real wages that are taking the hit.

The inflation caused by high energy and food prices in Europe is taking a terrible toll on worker wages.

Credit: https://twitter.com/MacroAlf/status/1563924619815309313/photo/1

It will only get worse when the weather gets colder and the days get shorter.

Germany is on track to a point where it will cost around $3,000 a month to heat a 2,500 sf home this winter.

A small coffee shop owner in Ireland got a bill of nearly 10,000 Euros for 73 days of electric service and posted it on Twitter.

All of this is being caused by the fact that energy has become a scarce resource in Europe that has driven the price to astronomical levels.

If nothing changes when winter comes, it may become an issue not only of cost but of whether the energy is available at all to service both consumer and business demands.

Many countries in Europe may soon have to decide whether the limited energy available goes to keep factories and businesses going or to keep the lights on and homes warm.

Of course, limiting energy supplies to businesses puts people out of work.

People out of work further hurts the economy and puts pressure on government budgets

Curbing supplies of energy to industrial giants like BASF in Germany, which make a wide range of products that serve the agricultural industry, could have major ramification on food supplies next year.

Once the dominos start to fall, more dominos follow.

Energy prices may ultimately be driven down by falling demand as the economy spirals into recession or depression.

At some point the economic system will equalize but it may have to collapse to get to that point.

Energy prices could revert to lower price levels if supply increases. 

The approaching winter months could well cause Europe to put a lot more pressure on a resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Might we also see Europe decide that exploring, drilling and fracking for oil and gas is not all bad?

Perhaps they will decide that burning coal is also not so bad if lives are at stake right now compared to concern about a degree of global warming in 50 years?

Elon Musk, the man who brought us the electric car Tesla, which the liberal intelligentsia believes is the be-all, end-all solution to usher in a new era of green sustainability, seems to understand the realities of the world today.

He said this in Norway this week.

Elon Musk said the world still needs oil and gas in order to avoid civilization from crumbling, Reuters reported.

He made the comments at an oil and gas conference in Stavanger, Norway and also mused on climate change, renewable energy, and population decline.

"Realistically I think we need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilization will crumble," Musk told delegates, per Reuters.

"One of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced is the transition to sustainable energy and to a sustainable economy. That will take some decades to complete."

He also said "at this time, we actually need more oil and gas, not less," and would not "demonize" fossil fuels in comments reported by Bloomberg.

Musk refers to decades of transition ahead to transition to think about moving away from fossil fuels.

And this is from a man who wants to sell electric vehicles.

Yet, California has just adopted a new rule that bans the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles in the state by the year 2035.

Did anyone ban horses (and their manure) when the transition began to automobiles?

By the end of this decade, California is requiring that 68% of new vehicles sold in the state must be zero-emissions. That is just 8 years away.

Zero emission new car sales were 12% in 2021.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/25/california-bans-the-sale-of-new-gas-powered-cars-by-2035.html

Will California have to face the same reality that Europe is right now?

It is great to issue an edict that all cars must be electric. However, where does the energy come to power the electric grid that is necessary to do that?

The battery in an electric car just stores power. It does not create it. It must come from an energy source.

California has already been facing challenges in providing all the electric power that is needed in the state as it is.

The only good news for the rest of the United States is that we can view the events in Europe and California from some distance and see how all of this unfolds.

Will we see a cold, dark winter in Europe that might serve as a cautionary tale to the rest of us?

Will California continue to crumble as it goes all-in on a far left liberal agenda based on dreams while ignoring the realities of the relationship of energy and the economy?

What is truly sad is that so many millions of people in Europe and California will have to bear the costs and burdens of the lessons to be learned when ideology comes face to face with reality.

The cold, hard truth is that voters need to be much more careful in selecting those who are supposed to represent their interests.

If not, there might be many cold, dark winters ahead.

Who Dares To Hazard A Guess?

How many illegal immigrants are in the United States?

I asked that question in these pages in 2018 because for years and years I kept hearing the same number---that there were an estimated 11 million illegals in the United States.

That estimate did not make sense because we had seen a continuing flood of illegals crossing our border for several decades but the total number of illegals never budged.

Getting a reliable answer proved to be elusive.

Here is what the U.S. Census Bureau said about it on their website in 2018.

Do the data on the foreign born collected by the Census Bureau include unauthorized immigrants?

Yes. The U.S. Census Bureau collects data from all foreign born who participate in its censuses and surveys, regardless of legal status. Thus, unauthorized migrants are implicitly included in Census Bureau estimates of the total foreign-born population, although it is not possible to tabulate separate estimates of unauthorized migrants.

Interestingly, the Census Bureau is saying the same thing now that the 2020 census is complete but it no longer is stating " although it is not possible to tabulate the separate estimates of unauthorized migrants."

Nevertheless, the Census Bureau is still not providing us with any numbers of the illegals in the country.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Center for Immigration Studies provide an annual estimate but you can see from this chart they continue to keep coming back to that 11 million number year after year.

Source: https://cis.org/Report/Estimating-Illegal-Immigrant-Population-Using-Current-Population-Survey

 

In my blog post on this subject in 2018, I provided a chart that showed an estimate of the number of illegals in the country going back to the early 1990's based on estimates from the Pew Research Center.

Does anyone seriously believe that there were less illegal immigrants in the United States in 2022 than there were in 2006?

That is especially true when you look at the most recent statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection which shows that 4.2 million illegals have been encountered at the southern border since the beginning of 2021.

Source: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters

The numbers are shocking.

2020        646,822 encounters with illegals at the border

2021     1,956,519 (202% increase over 2020)

2022.    2,242,413 (through July- this equates to 3,363,320 for a full 12 months) (319% increase over '20)  

This has all occurred in the short 18 months since Donald Trump left office and Joe Biden took control.

If current trends continue until the end of the year, 5.3 million illegals will have entered the United States in the last two years.

If the 11 million number is correct (which I have previously stated I seriously doubt) this means the illegal immigration population will have expanded by almost 50% in two short years.

You have to also ask what this is going to look like in another two years, especially if economic, energy and food pressures in Central and South America become intense motivating more people to head towards the United States?

Let's put these numbers in context.

The first comprehensive immigration law regulating who was allowed into the country was not passed until 1891. It established an "Immigration Bureau" and directed it to enforce the immigration law.

These laws have been revisited a number of times since then but the long-standing principle was a limitation on the number of immigrants who could gain entry into the country. A numerical annual limit on the annual number of immigrants allowed to enter the country has been in place for over 100 

years.

Why have immigration laws at all?

The original reason was to protect American workers, their wages and the country's culture. These all hold true today but I would argue sustainability is now an equally important factor. Too many immigrants puts too much strain on our resources. Schools, hospitals, health care resources, roads, infrastructure, the environment. Adding too many immigrants, too quickly, also puts added pressure on the social order if those immigrant numbers outpace the ability to integrate and assimilate them into the general population.

The current immigration laws are generally tied to a framework that was passed in 1965 which gave preferences to those with family connections first, refugees and asylum seekers. Necessary job skills were also factors but these were less important than family ties. It also set numerical limits on where those immigrants came from placing specific limits on areas that had provided most of our previous immigration (e.g. Western and Eastern Europe) and favoring other parts of the world (Asia, Africa etc).

Interestingly, at the time of passage of the bill, Senator Edward Kennedy who was Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration said this,

"The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." 

It did not quite turn out the way Senator Kennedy predicted.

The current U.S. immigration laws allowed only 740,000 persons to be granted permanent LEGAL immigration status in fiscal 2021 according to this DHS report.

Compare that to the almost 2 million that crossed the southern border in 2021 and were encountered by the Border Patrol. Undoubtedly, many, more snuck undetected across the border.

I need not remind you that all of this is in direct contravention of the laws of the United States.

We have laws that are supposed to limit the number of legal immigrants to under 1 million per year but we  turn a blind eye to another 3 million streaming across the southern border illegally?

This is the result when the  current executive branch of the United States is not only refusing to enforce the laws (which is their duty under the Constitution), but also seems to be actively encouraging this illegal immigration.

How many illegal immigrants are in the United States?

This apparently is a number that nobody in power is willing to reveal.

It also seems to be a subject that social media wants to keep under wraps.

In fact, Zero Hedge was recently suspended by Twitter for merely reporting the statistics above (with the addition of the number of illegals who crossed the border who were not detected by the Border Patrol as estimated by the Federation for American Immigration Reform).

Note that the suspension was for "hateful conduct". 

Is this because citing the statistic is "hateful'?

Perhaps it is because Twitter does not like the term "illegal alien".

However, that term has seemed fine to Webster's dictionary for a long, long time and was never considered "hateful" before

I don't know what the proper term to refer to the millions that are crossing are borders illegally and without documentation or authority is.

I would just like someone to give us a reliable number of how many illegal, unauthorized, undocumented aliens, immigrants, migrants or otherwise there are in the United States.

My guess is that it is a shocking number.

It is so big it undoubtedly would be judged hateful to even hazard a guess.

Improper, Wicked or Both?

I have no doubt what James Madison, the fourth President of the United States and referred to by many as  the Father of the Constitution, would say about Joe Biden's student debt cancellation plan.

He would say it is improper.

Or wicked.

Or perhaps both improper and wicked.

He might even say this is what happens when dangerous factions start promoting such things.

Biden announced yesterday that he is going to cancel student debt of $10,000 ($20,000 for those who also got Pell Grants---60% of borrowers fall in this category) for households with up to $250,000 of income by executive order. 

The $10,000/$20.000 per person debt cancellation will directly cost $360 billion according to estimates by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Biden has also proposed a new rule that will only require payments on student loans on up to 5% of an individual's discretionary income. It is currently 10%. This will cost another $120 billion over the next 10 years.

Finally, Biden has extended the current pause of student loan repayments (which has been in effect for the last 2-1/2 years) for an additional four months. That is estimated to cost another $20 million.

It all adds up to a cool half a trillion dollars on the signature of one man.

I doubt that James Madison or our Founders ever thought this would be possible.

Credit: https://twitter.com/BudgetHawks/status/1562560080645525506/photo/1

 

The cost of the student debt cancellation is more than double what the so-called "Inflation Reduction Act" was supposed to save in federal budget dollars over the next 10 years.

So much for deficit reduction. If anyone believed that to begin with.

We can only guess what additional fuel this debt cancellation will have on the inflation fire as well.

So much for inflation reduction as well.

First, let's put some context around how much student debt is out there.

There is currently over $1.7 trillion in student loan debt in the United States. 

$1.6 trillion of this is held by the federal government since the Obama administration federalized most of the student loan program in 2010.

There are over 45 million outstanding student loans as of August, 2022. The White House estimates that 43 million of these loans will be at least partially cancelled as a result of this action.

It is also important to consider that about 50% of all student loan debt outstanding was taken out for graduate programs---medical and dental school, law school, MBA programs etc.

I think Madison would be befuddled that any President would believe he could cancel lawfully owed student debt without Congressional approval.

Nancy Pelosi said the same thing last year.

Source: https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1562150784862756865

Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last year that Joe Biden was waiting for a bill from Congress to cancel student loan debt and he would sign it if it was passed. There was no mention that he had the power to act on his own at that time.

Source: https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1562595892649402369

What changed?

Biden has seen a drastic decline in support from young voters since the 2020 election.

He received 60% of the vote of those ages18-34 in 2020.

A Quinnipiac poll in in June showed Biden had a mere 21% approval rating from these same young voters. Biden was at 48% approval with voters age 65+ in the same poll.

Credit: https://nypost.com/2022/06/09/biden-approval-at-22-among-young-adults-24-among-hispanics-poll/?utm_medium=SocialFlow&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter

Biden and Democrats are looking at a future of election oblivion if they lose the young voters which have long been their most reliable voting bloc.

The student loan cancellation is a blatant political ploy to curry favor with the young, liberal, college class that has increasingly been the heart and soul of the Democrat party.

At the same time, this student cancellation plan spits in the face of the working class high school grad that has abandoned the Democrats and become the energetic base of the Republican Party and Donald Trump in particular.

If you think this is anything more than crass political pandering and counter-punching think again.

How does Biden think he can get away with this constitutionally?

It appears Biden is relying on a post-9/11 HEROES ACT that allows the Secretary of Education to grant relief from student loan requirements during specific periods (war, other military operations, or national emergency). That HEROES ACT allows the Secretary to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs."

Waive or modify provisions of the loan?

It says nothing about cancelling the loan permanently.

Further, how can we still be in a national emergency with Covid for this purpose while at the same time Biden has argued we are not in a national emergency with Covid for Title 42 purposes at the southern border?

It is also interesting that the Biden administration has been forcefully denying we are in a recession pointing to the low unemployment rate and strong labor market. This raises the question as to where the hardship is coming from that is getting in the way of the repaying these student loans?

One thing we can be sure of is that this student loan cancellation will be challenged in court.

You can also be sure that those student borrowers are going to be much worse off if this executive action is overturned by the judiciary as the interest on the loan will continue to compound and put these borrowers further in the hole.

Let us return to James Madison who wrote in Federalist Paper #10 how our Constitution with its three branches, its separation of powers and its federalist view of government was designed to protect us from dangerous factions that might try to promote "Improper and Wicked Projects".

What were three leading examples of "Improper and Wicked Projects" according to Madison?

A rage for the abolition of debts 

A rage for paper money 

A rage for an equal division (or redistribution) of property 

Cancelling student loans would seem to be a trifecta involving all three.

You have the rage for the abolition of the student debt.

You have the rage for the redistribution of property to a few (the student loan borrowers) from everyone else.

You have the rage for the creation of even more paper money by the Federal Reserve to pay for the cancelled debt to balance the federal government's books.

It does not get more improper... or wicked than that according to Madison.

Unless you consider this take by Nina Turner who is a former State Senator in Ohio.

What is truly scary is that she has over 550,000 Twitter followers who must believe this stuff.

Turner has also been an Assistant Professor of History at Cuyahoga Community College if you wonder how some of younger voters have voted the way they have in the past.

If what Turner says is true, why doesn't every bank and credit card company cancel all the debt they have from all their borrowers so they can save all those costs?

When James Madison referred to "dangerous factions" he also knew what he was talking about.

Student loan debt cancellation---improper, wicked, dangerous---take your pick.

They all apply

Beliefs and Doubts

It should be clear by any objective measure today that much of the advice and guidance given by the public health authorities about Covid was wrong.

The list is long.

The use of masks.

The lockdowns and shutdowns.

School closures.

The effectiveness of the vaccines.

Vaccine mandates.

Recommended treatment protocols such as the use of ventilators and Remdisivir.

The censorship of opposing views which were labeled "misinformation".

What was particularly egregious was the fact that the public health authorities claimed that "science" supported everything they told us to do.

We were told they were "following the science".

However, it seems that science only matters today if it is the science you agree with.

Of course, scientific facts are not debatable. They are settled and irrefutable.

The results are reproducible time after time with no exceptions

A scientific fact is the law of gravity, the boiling point of water or the distance to the moon. 

That is why we often hear statements about the "consensus" of scientists today when it comes to many "scientific issues". 

Of course, "consensus" is not the same as facts. And consensus is not a scientific fact. 

Over two years into the Covid pandemic, I see more questions being asked as to how so many people could have been misled?

Why were there not more people who questioned what they were told?

How could so many people blindly accept things as true when they were actually untrue?

Malcom Gladwell is one of my favorite authors.

Malcom Gladwell
Credit: CBS News

His books often delve into the unexpected implications of research in sociology, psychology and other social sciences as it applies to real world experience and events.

I recently finished reading Gladwell's sixth book, "Talking to Strangers" .

Although written before the pandemic ( published in 2019), I think it provides excellent insights into why so many people were misled by the authorities.

Gladwell's core thesis in the book is that most humans are very bad at assessing the truthfulness, intentions and motivations of people they don't some into contact every day---strangers. 

In fact, that skill can also be sadly lacking as applied to those we know well.

Gladwell believes this is curious in that you would think that being able to read people correctly would be a core trait that humans would need to survive over the millennia. It would seem logical that those with the best skills in doing so would survive and those who did not would perish. 

Evolution should have favored those who could read strangers the best about whether someone else was deceiving them.

However, that is not the case.

A wide range of scientific research shows that people are notoriously bad on being able to tell who is lying to them and who is telling them the truth.

This applies to even those whose job it is to be good at separating those who are telling the truth versus peddling a lie--- police interrogators, judges who make bail and judicial decisions, etc.

Why is that?

Gladwell cites research that indicates that most people default to truth in interactions with others.

In other words, our operating assumption is that the people we are dealing with are telling us the truth.

That is the human default position that we start from.

This is how Gladwell describes it on p.74 of the book.

We start by believing. And we stop believing only when our doubts and misgivings rise to the point where we can no longer explain them away.

As a general rule, "defaulting to truth" serves society well. It would be difficult to function as a society if everyone questioned everything. We take it as a matter of faith that most people are honest and trustworthy.

Of course, in the case of Covid, it was just not anyone you were getting the guidance and direction from.

You were being told "the truth" by the AUTHORITIES.

I previously wrote about the strong influence of authority as it applied to Covid in a blog post in March, 2021.

 

We are trained from birth to listen and defer to authority. As a result, we believe that obedience to authority is correct behavior and disobedience is wrong.

As human beings we generally have a deep-seated sense of duty to authority. Parents, teachers, coaches, the police, bosses at work, doctors and elected officials are just some of the authorities we have been taught to listen to and show obedience to.

Authority is one of the six key principles that have been identified as having the most effect in influencing someone else's behavior according to Dr. Robert Cialdini who has spent most of his life studying influence and persuasion.

There is no better example of how strong the influence of authority is than in seeing how people quickly conformed to behaving exactly as they were told when it came to Covid compliance.

This is how I described the influence of authority in our Covid world in that March, 2021 blog post.

Authority has been used to influence people's behavior to degrees than most would have thought inconceivable a year ago.

That authority has dictated new norms of behavior that almost everyone has been obedient to.

Social distancing. Mandatory masking. School closures. Economic lockdowns.

People were obedient. After all, the "experts" told us what to do and they were the "authorities".

Who am I to question Dr. Fauci in his white lab coat or the state's public health director, the governor or the President of the United States?

However, as we sit here today, were they really "experts" when it came to this? Did they really have the knowledge and the decision skills to be trustworthy?

Did they have their own agenda? Were there other motivations at play?

Is it any wonder that so many BELIEVED what they were told?

They defaulted to what they believed was the TRUTH from people that they believed they could TRUST.

By now, most people have to have some DOUBTS about what they were told about Covid.

So much that people were told has been proven to be untrue

"You will not get or transmit Covid if you get these vaccines."

"It is a pandemic of the unvaccinated."

"The vaccines are really, really good against variants."

If that alone has not created doubts, seeing your double vaccinated friends (or yourself) catch the virus should have had that effect.

However, we have not yet reached a TIPPING POINT (another Gladwell book) where enough doubts are present in enough people to tip the scales completely on what the public at large believes about Covid policy and the vaccines in particular.

Gladwell says that belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone until those doubts accumulate to the point that they no longer can be ignored or explained away.

It is also more difficult to not default to truth (believe what you are told) when forced to choose between two alternatives, one of which is likely and the other which is impossible to imagine.

Why would they be mandating these vaccines if they were not safe and effective and the right thing to do?

It is impossible to imagine they would have done that unless it was absolutely necessary.

It is just hard to imagine that they would have mandated the firing of nurses, forced highly-trained pilots out of the armed services and required toddlers to wear masks unless it was absolutely clear they knew these things would stop the pandemic.

Have doubts increased among the populace of what they have been told?

Undoubtedly.

For example, less than half of the people who have beeb fully vaccinated (two doses) have rolled up their sleeves to receive a booster dose.

That is over 100 million displays of doubt.

You see the same thing in the numbers of children under age 5 that have not been vaccinated.

Less than 5% of children under age 5 have received any Covid vaccine despite the shots being available for over two months and having been heavily promoted by public health authorities and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

More doubts.

Will we reach a tipping point?

I have serious doubts.

It is not easy to get beyond one's beliefs.

It is even harder when you not only believed what you were told but you injected something into your body based on that belief.

The natural human reaction to any doubt is to explain it away and default to what you believe to be the truth.

Why have some already passed the tipping point?

I think that is a function of their level of doubts about the Covid narrative from the beginning.

If you start with a higher level of doubt it does not take as many new doubts to reach the tipping point.

If you have been a long time reader of BeeLine you know that I had significant doubts about our Covid response shortly after the "15 days to slow the spread" had come and gone.

Too much did not add up when I looked at the models, the data and what I saw to be the enormous economic and human dislocations taking place as early as April, 2020.

The economic lockdowns, school closures and all the rest were quickly put in place. Several months later the mask mandates followed. 15 days to slow the spread had soon turned into 365 days to slow the spread at human and financial costs that were incalculable.

None of it made sense especially when viewed against the responses during other pandemic periods of human history like the Spanish flu.

My doubts increased as time went by as I analyzed more data and facts that did not support the narrative promoted by the authorities

We are now 900 days into our Covid response. 

I wrote this in that same blog post in March, 2021 just as the vaccines were starting to be heavily pushed on the general population.

I explained the doubts I had about what we had been told and raised further questions about how much we should rely on what we were being told about the vaccines.

Did these authorities really know what they were doing? Were they trustworthy looking back from our perspective today one year later?

Those same experts and authorities are now aggressively promoting a vaccination program to slow the spread.

We are told that the vaccines are safe.

We are told that the vaccines are 95% effective.

However, is that really the case?

Do they really know? Do you really know if that is trustworthy advice?

I hope it is. However, I don't know that it is at this point. Despite what they tell you, the authorities don't truly know either. There is no way they could know right now. These vaccines have just not gone through the testing and trials that are normally done.

Notice that I asked the question then as to how trustworthy the authorities were and asked questions that those authorities should have been asking of the Pharma companies at that time as well as of themselves?

Were the vaccines as effective as we were being told?

Were they safe?

How do they know?

How do we really know?

As time has gone by and the facts have been revealed, the questions I posed do not look like they were misplaced. 

My doubts ultimately crossed the tipping point and became distrust.

That belief may ultimately be challenged by new doubts that go the other way.

However, it will only come through facts, data and real science.

I am not taking anyone's word for it.

Neither should anyone else at this point.

It applies to Covid as well as other interactions where you might be disposed to "default to truth" or when dealing with the attestations of strangers.

If you feel doubt or something doesn't seem to add up, don't just dismiss it. Step back and think about those doubts more deeply. Investigate more thoroughly and ask yourself if you are defaulting when you should be deliberating more fully about your beliefs.

I will leave you with the same advice I offered in March, 2021.

Keep these rules in mind.

Beware the influence of authority.

Know that you are predisposed to do what authority figures tell you to do. It is the way we are all built.

However, do the "authorities" know what they are doing? Can you trust them?

How good has their record been in the past?

The biggest thing I hear from people today is they do not know who or what to believe.

Do your own research. No one has your best interests in mind better than you.

My objective is to give you some facts and perspectives you may not see from other sources.

I wish I knew all the answers. I don't. 

I do know that most people should be asking a lot more questions of the authorities than they are.

Be willing to suspend your beliefs in the face of doubts.

On the subject of Covid policy, that time should have already arrived for most if they have been paying attention.

I Didn't Eat The Cupcake...Or Vote To Send The IRS To Audit You

It seems that humans are born with an innate ability to lie even when caught redhanded.

Who hasn't confronted a young child when a cupcake is missing and ever got a straight answer about who ate it?

It doesn't matter even if the icing is smeared all of over their face.

A video about a young boy who was questioned about a cupcake by his father went viral in 2015 to such a degree that ABC News did a story on it.

https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/boy-denies-eating-cupcake-icing-face/story?id=34583512

One little boy is going viral for getting caught red-handed, or rather blue icing-faced, by his daddy.

“Did you eat a cupcake?,” the adorable boy’s dad asks him in the YouTube video.

“No!” Jack, the tiny toddler, quickly replies.

“You sure you didn’t eat a cupcake?,” Jack’s persistent dad asks again.

“No, I wasn’t at home,” the equally insistent little guy replies.

“Hmm…I thought for sure you maybe had a cupcake,” the father tries one last time, obviously referring to his son’s blue icing smeared all over his face and mouth.

You’ve got to hand it to Jack. He really says “no” with conviction. And who could get angry at that face?

“They were giving out free blue cupcakes in honor of the New York Giants,” the video, which has more than 215,000 views since Oct. 17, describes in the caption.

We should expect better from our elected representatives and other authorities but it is no different.

They are caught red-handed but refuse to admit the truth.

We are seeing exactly that in the aftermath of the $80 billion funding to hire an additional 87,000 IRS personnel.

There has been considerable blowback from the this provision in the "Inflation Reduction Act" and the Democrats are working hard to cover their tracks with the help of the mainstream media.

I have seen a stream of stories that have attempted to obscure, hide or deny the truth.

One example is the new narrative circulating that attempts to argue that most of those new IRS employees will merely be hired due to attrition over the next 10 years.

That is the theme of a story from Time.

Source: https://time.com/6204928/irs-87000-agents-factcheck-biden/

According to a Treasury Department official, the funds would cover a wide range of positions including IT technicians and taxpayer services support staff, as well as experienced auditors who would be largely tasked with cracking down on corporate and high-income tax evaders.

“It is wholly inaccurate to describe any of these resources as being about increasing audit scrutiny of the middle class or small businesses,” Natasha Sarin, a counselor for tax policy and implementation at the Treasury Department, tells TIME.

At the same time, more than half of the agency’s current employees are eligible for retirement and are expected to leave the agency within the next five years. “There’s a big wave of attrition that’s coming and a lot of these resources are just about filling those positions,” says Sarin, an economist who has studied tax avoidance extensively and who was tapped by the Biden administration to beef up the IRS’s auditing power.

In all, the IRS might net roughly 20,000 to 30,000 more employees from the new funding, enough to restore the tax-collecting agency’s staff to where it was roughly a decade ago.

The problem with this explanation is that the legislation gives the IRS additional funds compared to what it has now.

The IRS would not need additional budget authority to replace current positions. It already has that funding.

The legislation makes clear that the new money appropriated is for additional resources.

Source: https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1560307379274764288

You will notice in the Time article it also states that it is inaccurate to say that the additional resources will be used to increase audit scrutiny of the middle class or small businesses.

However, almost 60% of the money in the law was specifically mentioned as being for ENFORCEMENT.

Source: https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1560307565971611650/photo/1

Almost the entire reason for the increased funding for the IRS in the bill was premised on the fact that there were a lot of tax revenues that could be collected by increased enforcement and compliance efforts by the IRS.

In fact, of the $676 billion in gross revenue raised by the law over the next ten years, over $200 billion in additional collections is expected to brought in through increased IRS audit and enforcement activities.

Since the law was passed, almost every Democrat has gotten in front of a microphone and said that any additional audits and tax revenues were going to come solely from those making more than $400,000 per year and those big, rich corporations.

For example, Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen has specifically  claimed that the new IRS funds won't be used for increased tax audits for those under $400k in income.

Source: https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/yellen-new-irs-funds-wont-boost-audits-for-those-under-400k

Really?

Where is the estimated potential tax revenue that could be collected with more IRS audits going to come from?

It seems that the greatest opportunity for the IRS to collect more money is from those making less than $100,000 according to their own data.

The following chart is from a report that the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation produced that was prepared to answer the question as to where the biggest income levels were where the IRS might find unreported income.

Source: https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/irs_enforcement_jct_analysis.pdf

 

The IRS wants to collect more tax revenues from those who are underreporting their taxes.

75% of the opportunity comes from taxpayers who file tax returns reporting less than $100,000.

Most of it involves small businesses that are operated as sole proprietorships or partnerships.

Are they really going to ignore their own data?

It is interesting as well that Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho proposed an amendment to the bill that would have specifically made it clear in the law that audits of those under $400,000 would not be increased due to this new law.

Every Democrat voted against the amendment as it failed to be adopted.

What does that tell you?

I have also heard that the additional IRS funding is really directed at improving customer service.

It is true that that some of the money is supposed to be spent on customer service.

A grand total of 4% of the additional funding. (see the chart above).

So much for the customer service argument.

Finally, The Washington Post ran an op-ed defending the additional IRS funding arguing that its return processing is so antiquated that it is only reasonable to provide this money to improve technology.

The op-ed included an image of the IRS Service Center cafeteria in Austin, TX filled with boxes of tax returns,

Yes, the IRS is in need of modernization. 

However, refer to the distribution of funds in the chart above once again.

Only 6% is targeted for systems modernization.

Further, when technology is deployed you would expect that would result in the need for fewer paper shuffling processors. 

Employment should come down, not go up by 87,000.

Of course, new computers and processing technology do not require wages or union dues.

Could it be that the following factoid might also have something to do with why the Democrats are eager to add 87,000 new employees to the IRS?

Source: https://www.atr.org/irs-union-gives-100-of-pac-spending-to-democrats/

I am sure it is just a coincidence.

Just like it was a coincidence that the Democrats started insisting that the additional IRS funding had nothing to do with the IRS coming to audit you at the same moment that all of this was disclosed as being  a part of that "Inflation Reduction Act."

A 3-year with icing smeared on their face does not understand how easy it is to reveal their lie.

How is it that our elected representatives (and the media) don't understand this?

Why can't they just admit the truth?

They want to spend more money.

They know they can't raise taxes on the middle class because Biden said over and over he wouldn't.

However, they need $200 billion of tax revenues to make the numbers work in their climate change  inflation reduction bill.

The solution---give the IRS more money and more agents and get it from audit enforcement.

Then hope nobody will notice.

It was noticed.

And traces of the tell-tale "IRS audit" icing that gives away their lies is evident everywhere you look.

Just look above for starters.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm-August 17, 2022 Edition

I assess a great amount of information each week. I read and survey a number of general, economic and political news sites in addition to opinion and commentary materials.

The items that catch my attention are the outlier facts that often go against the standard reporting or narrative of the day. What I am most interested in are the facts that point away from what you might have been told, or what you may think, to be true.

My biggest goal in writing BeeLine is putting things in context. As I often write in these pages, context is everything when assessing anything. In the news bite era we live in today, context is often no where to be found. I try to provide it when I write about a subject.

Coming into contact with so much material I often find I don't have the time to go deeper with a factoid I have discovered. Sometimes not much else needs to be said. The factoid itself says enough.

Here are a few such items that I have seen recently that make me go Hmmmm.

Perhaps you will as well.

Electricity Rates in Europe

It could be a cold and dark winter in Europe as things now stand.

Forward-looking electricity rates per Megawatt hour in France are up 1,000% due to the Ukraine war where half of the nuclear reactors are also shut down for maintenance issues due to the discovery of cracked pipes.

Source: https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1557675782486597633

The Federal Reserve and Interest Rates

We hear that the Fed is aggressively moving to contain inflation by raising interest rates.

Compared to previous periods of inflation it is almost as if the Fed has done nothing thus far.

Source: https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1559496612426162180/photo/1

Is the Fed so boxed-in with the massive money printing is has done that it can't really raise interest rates significantly without bringing the entire house of cards down?

The Fed owns $9 trillion in federal securities (printed money) from its quantitative easing program.

The Fed say that they are going to unwind this through a quantitative tightening program.

At the rate it is tightening so far, it is going to take a long, long, long time.

Source: https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1559496916626456576/photo/1

Interest Rates and Homebuyers

It seems that high home prices and higher interest rates may be having an effect on the number of prospective buyers looking for a new house.

The good news is that it is not as bad as the first few months of the Covid pandemic...yet.

Credit: https://twitter.com/LizAnnSonders/status/1559479886288457728

Starbucks on Mail-In Voting---Then and Now

Starbucks was a huge advocate and supporter of mail-in voting in the 2020 general election.

They even developed an app to help employees vote by mail.

Source: https://www.krmsradio.com/starbucks-to-use-app-to-help-employees-vote-by-mail/

However, Starbucks is now asking that the National Labor Relations Board suspend mail-in voting regarding elections nationwide that involve attempts to unionize its employees.

Starbucks is concerned about misconduct in the mail-in balloting and wants future elections to be "in-person".

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/08/15/starbucks-asks-labor-board-to-suspend-mail-in-ballot-union-elections-alleging-misconduct-in-voting-process.html

Who would have thought?

Covid Strikes Again

Jill Biden and Albert Boula (Pfizer's CEO) both announced this week that they have contracted Covid-19.

Both Mrs. Biden and Bourla were double-vaccinated and double-boosted.

Bourla is also on the record as stating that Pfizer's Covid vaccine was 100% effective in its South African clinical trials in April, 2021. 

It was stated to be 95% effective in the U.S. trials.

Both are now being treated with a course of Pfizer's Paxlovid drug that is supposed to limit the chances of severe disease or hospitalization from Covid.

To recap.

They both got two doses of the Covid vaccine because it was supposed to be 95%-100% effective at preventing disease.

When that proved untrue the narrative was later amended to claim that the vaccines were not really meant to prevent disease but to keep Covid from becoming severe so that hospitalization was not required.

They then each took two more booster doses to prevent severe disease.

They still both got Covid.

Now they are taking another Pfizer drug after being infected (Paxlovid) to prevent the severe disease we were told the vaccines were for.

Paxlovid is supposed to be 88% effective in reducing severe disease, hospitalizations and deaths from Covid.

Source: https://www.scripps.org/news_items/7436-should-i-take-paxlovid-if-i-get-covid-19

Of course,  Joe Biden and Tony Fauci, who were also double vaccinated and double boosted, also just recently recovered from bouts with Covid.

Four shots to prevent a disease and now another drug to stop the infection from becoming severe which, at a minimum, is what the four shots were supposed to do in the first place?

Do I have this right?

And to top it off, Joe Biden and Tony Fauci ended up with a second Covid rebound case after taking Paxlovid.

It is very confusing keeping everything straight when it comes to Covid.

How Times Have Changed

This man was billed as the "world's fattest man" at a circus side show in 1890.

Source: https://twitter.com/asIiceofhistory/status/1557076735077666816

People paid to see him.

Now you can see sights like this almost everywhere you go.

How about this colorized image of Daytona Beach, Florida in 1904 as well?

Source: https://twitter.com/syeda12857880/status/1554524186877407232/photo/1

How times have changed.