In Name Only

Yesterday the Senate on a 51-50 vote (with Kamala Harris breaking the 50-50 tie) passed the so-called "Inflation Reduction Act". All 50 Democrats voted for the bill. All 50 Republicans voted against it.

The Democrats were pushing so hard that in the Senate they adopted a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on Covid over the last week in case a positive test in their ranks might prevent a member from voting.

Source: https://nypost.com/2022/08/05/senate-dems-skipping-covid-testing-to-push-spending-bill-vote-report/

Senate Democrats are embracing a “Don’t Test, Don’t Tell” policy this weekend as they try to ram a $764 billion spending bill through the 50-50 chamber — knowing that even one COVID-19 positive could blow up their plans.

“They’re not going to delay it if a member has gotten COVID,” a senior Senate aide told Puck News. “Counterparts are saying they’re not going to test anymore. It’s not an official mandate but we all know we’re not letting COVID get in the way. The deal is happening. Less testing, just wear masks and get it done.” 

The bill moves to the House this week where the Democrats hold a slim majority.

In case you think the bill has anything to do with inflation, you have been watching too much news on MSNBC or CNN or following the wrong Facebook friends for public policy guidance.

If you look closely at what is in the "Inflation Reduction Act" you will see that almost every provision was also a part of the proposed "Green New Deal" previously championed by Democrats or Biden's "Build Back Better" bill that passed the House last November but failed to gain approval in the Senate.

Rather than title this legislation "Build Back Somewhat Better" the Democrats just slapped on something that matches voter's concerns right now---INFLATION.

Of course, there is nothing in the bill that will actually reduce inflation.

The legislation will further increase deficit spending.

It doesn't direct the Federal Reserve to stop printing money.

It doesn't direct the Federal Reserve to reduce its balance sheet that now holds more than $8 trillion in debt securities.

It doesn't do anything to increase oil and gas supplies or lower gasoline prices.

It doesn't do anything to secure our food supplies or improve the supply chain.

It doesn't reduce taxes---it actually increases them.

This legislation is principally about providing all sorts of government subsidies--- from the purchase of electric vehicles, solar panels and the like to providing more subsidies for Obamacare plans.

Why are subsidies necessary for green energy initiatives or health care?

It is due to the fact that neither are affordable in the consumer marketplace today.

The average cost of family healthcare coverage is 3 times more expensive today than it was when Obamacare was passed on the promise that it was going to reduce healthcare costs.

Do you remember this campaign pledge by Barack Obama?

Source: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/521/cut-cost-typical-familys-health-insurance-premium-/

Electric cars and solar panel systems are generally too expensive today to make economic sense for most people. 

The argument is that the government subsidies are necessary to make the transition away from fossil fuels.

However, did the government subsidize automobiles to transition away from horses at the beginning of the 20th Century?

The transition occurred naturally when it made economic sense.

A big talking point of Democrats on the rationale for the legislation is that it will allow the United States to reduce carbon emissions by 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

However, the United States is already on track to reduce carbon emissions  by 27% by 2030 without this bill.

You have to wonder whether all the economic dislocation, disruptions and tax increases make sense when we are entering a recession. 

The Democrats claim that the legislation will reduce the deficit.

However, if there is any deficit reduction it only takes place in year 2027 and later. Federal budget estimates five year out are not very reliable. That is especially true when a subsequent Congress can simply change the law again.

A big portion of the deficit reduction is based on estimates that the IRS will take in $200 billion in additional revenue from increased IRS enforcement efforts.

This is going to be accomplished by hiring 87,000 new IRS agents and support personnel at a cost of over $80 billion.

To put that in context, in 2021 the IRS only had 78,661 full-time equivalent employees (FTE's) in conducting its work with an annual budget of $13.7 billion per year.

This legislation will double the size of the IRS. 

Credit: https://patriots.win/p/15JAOGrfLd/supersize-it/c/

Those employees oversee collections of $4.1 trillion today.

This means that the IRS currently spends just $1 dollar in costs for every $300 in revenues it collects.

This addition to the IRS workforce by the Democrats is estimated to bring in less than $3 in revenue for every $1 in additional cost according to the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

In other words, the payback on this increase is 99% less efficient than the IRS is right now at collecting revenue.

This is not surprising in that most of the revenue sources are already locked down pretty hard by the IRS as it is. 

There is little room to cheat by anyone who gets a W-2 for their wages or has their dividends and interest reported to the IRS on a 1099.

Large corporations are already under constant IRS audits.

When I was Corporate Director-Taxation for a Fortune 500 corporation we had two IRS agents permanently assigned to audit our returns. We were obligated to provide them spaces in our offices. They worked in our offices 40 hours per week and typically took three years to audit three years of returns. I had to generally service their document requests and other needs with two FTE's from my staff.

If the IRS is going to find additional revenue it is going to have to come from smaller businesses and sole proprietorships and subjecting hundreds of thousands of Americans (mostly at lower income levels) to IRS audits.

Here is one projection as to what that means.

Source: https://twitter.com/JacquiHeinrich/status/1555700945928929280

The only thing certain is that this expansion of the IRS will be intrusive, infuriating and incredibly inefficient.

To give you an idea of how large the IRS will be when they more than double their workforce consider this factoid.

It makes you wonder whether some of those new IRS employees might be better allocated to the Border Patrol right now.

Obama-era (and Trump) IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told The New York Times recently that he did not think that the IRS could effectively utilize $80 billion in new spending. He stated that $25 billion in additional spending was more realistic.

Source: https://twitter.com/johnkartch/status/1555963838528229377

The Democrats are going to throw three times the amount of money at the IRS that even its former commissioner admits is unlikely to be used efficiently?

This increase in employment at the IRS to increase compliance and enforcement makes even less sense when you consider the challenge in hiring that many people to work in these government jobs.

In its job descriptions for revenue agents the IRS requires a Bachelor's Degree in Accounting as a minimum requirement for the job.

The IRS wants to hire 87,000 agents and support personnel but there are only about 50,000 B.S. degrees awarded in Accounting each year in the United States.

How does this work without massively disrupting the private sector job market for accountants?

This is not even considering the fact that if the IRS is going to unleash 87,000 new employees intent on collecting more revenue and that the private sector is going to need to hire an army of accountants and lawyers to defend themselves.

I can confidently predict this bill is not going to do much to reduce inflation in the accounting job market.

I can also confidently predict that all of these so-called objectives in the bill will be found to be "in name only" when all said and done.

Inflation reduction will be in name only.

Deficit reduction will be in name only.

A meaningful reduction in carbon emissions will be in name only.

Any effects on so-called "climate change" will be in name only.

This is particularly true as if carbon emissions has anything to do with climate change, China is also  adept at doing things in name only.

China says they are fully committed to the Paris Accords in reducing carbon emissions but what they are actually doing says something else.

It is the same in Washington, D.C.

The name on it and the narrative used to promote it is always more important than the substance of what will be the end result when all is said and done.

And there will always be much more SAID...than done.

Why Did They Deny Natural Immunity?

One of the biggest mysteries of our Covid experience is why public health authorities were so intent on denying natural immunity as a tool to end the pandemic.

"Vaccines are highly efficacious,"  "They are better than the traditional response you get from natural infection" is what Dr. Fauci was claiming in May, 2021.

However, through most of human history natural immunity has been the only way that humans could get beyond a contagious virus and survive as a species.

It is true that counting on the build-up of herd immunity through natural means can result in additional sickness and deaths. However, it has been proven to be reliable and long lasting.

Vaccines for diseases such as small pox and polio were successful in building population immunity because they prevented the virus from replicating within your body to prevent illness but also in transmitting the virus to others.

In these pages two years ago I warned my readers that it was unlikely that the Covid vaccines would prevent Covid disease or stop transmission.

How did I know this?

I studied the protocols behind the clinical studies which made it clear that the pharma companies were not making prevention of disease or transmission to be key objectives of the vaccines.

This is what I wrote in "What You Should Know About the Vaccines" in October, 2020.

I think most people take a vaccine under the assumption that it will prevent them from getting sick.

I dare say that 99.9% of the people waiting for the Covid-19 vaccine(s) have the expectation that if they take the vaccine it will prevent them from being infected with the virus.

They would be wrong.

Prevention of infection is the normal critical end point goal for any vaccine trial. The vaccine should be effective at preventing infection and stopping the spread of the virus. This is particularly important at this time when we have a virus that has caused a pandemic.

However, that is not the stated goal of the Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccines that are currently in late stage trials with the expectation they will be ready for widespread distribution within several months.

The vaccines are to be considered a success merely if they reduce the severity of the symptoms of someone who is infected with Covid.

This is further confirmed in the vaccine testing protocols in that none of the vaccine candidates list preventing hospitalizations and deaths as primary goals of the vaccines either.

What then is the point of spending billions and billions of dollars on these vaccines?

I stated at that time that the entire vaccine trial protocols seem to have been designed to make sure they would succeed in that the bar had been set so low.

We now know the truth of what I was saying almost two years ago.

What was the rationale for the emergency use authorization originally?

The FDA stated the vaccines would PREVENT Covid-19 when there was little evidence that was true.

These are direct excerpts from the FDA Review Memorandums for the authorizations of the Moderna and Pfizer Covid vaccines.

You will notice that the the FDA claimed that the vaccines would "prevent coronavirus disease" as the basis for the emergency use authorization.

This was clearly wrong.

Cases have continued to climb, essentially unabated, ever since the vaccines were introduced.

It has been even worse in other countries which had very few Covid cases until after the vaccines were introduced.

For example, look at Vietnam.

Vietnam had almost no Covid cases or deaths before the vaccines were introduced.

It then somehow changed.

A year ago Australia and New Zealand were being hailed as models of Covid containment.

More than 80% of every man, woman and child in both countries is fully vaccinated.

Over 50% of the population has been boosted.

Both countries now have had more cumulative Covid cases per capita than the United States has had since the beginning of the pandemic.

How could this be?

I don't believe anyone knows for sure.

It could be that these countries were more vulnerable to Omicron as there was little natural immunity built up to Covid in prior waves.

For example, Sweden, where public health officials were more willing to employ a strategy of building natural population immunity early in the pandemic, has had essentially no Covid cases for the last six months.

This seems to suggest that natural immunity is far superior to the vaccines at preventing future disease and transmission in the population.

It could be that the vaccines, which are better at suppressing symptoms than at preventing disease and transmission, has created a lot of people who are asymptomatic but have become super spreaders of the virus not realizing they are sick. After all, symptoms serve a purpose. They tell us we are sick.

Finally, it could be that the vaccines are suppressing the natural immune response that everyone has to some degree thereby making people more susceptible to the virus.

There are those who still claim that the vaccines are preventing severe disease and death in the current Omicron wave.

However, those hospitalized in Australia with Covid recently set a record despite the fact that 96% of all adults are fully vaccinated and 70% boosted in that nation.

Until this year, there had been few Covid hospitalizations in Australia.

Australia has also recently experienced a record number of deaths from Covid.

Does this data suggest that the vaccines are "highly effective" at preventing transmission, severe disease or death?

Contrast what is happening in Australia with what is going on in Africa right now.

Vaccination rates in Africa are lower than anywhere else in the world.

Only 20% of the population is fully vaccinated. Less than 3% have taken a booster dose.

Africa is barely being touched by the latest Omicron variant (hat tip to @Humble_Analysis on Twitter for pointing me to this data).

This suggests that population immunity built up in the prior waves is protecting the population.

It clearly is not from the vaccines considering the low vaccination rates.

It is interesting as well that the death rate has barely budged in Africa in Wave 5.

In the first three waves, deaths mirrored cases but this relationship began to fall apart with Omicron BA 1/2 and has completely disconnected with Omicron BA 4/5.

This suggests the lower death rates from Omicron around the world has more to do with the virus than any significant protection from the vaccines.

Why did they deny natural immunity?

Why was a prior infection not recognized at the same time that hospital workers and others were mandated to take the vaccine or lose their job?

We may never know.

However, it has to be one of the biggest mistakes in the history of public health.

Could it be that the total reliance on the vaccines and denying the benefits of natural immunity has prolonged the pandemic considerably?

Is it possible that the mass vaccination campaign (also requiring that those previously infected be vaccinated) during the middle of the pandemic was the principal reason we have seen so many variants?

The data suggests that these are more than fringe theories.

Of course, the most fringe of all theories was the argument that the vaccines would offer better protection against infection than natural immunity from prior infection.

Why did this become part of the narrative?

Moving On

What cities do people want to leave right now?

Where do people want to move?

The real estate website Redfin recently did a study based on searches for homes on its website for 100 metro areas.

From this data, it was able to compile a list of the 10 cities which people were looking to sell their home and move elsewhere as well as 10 cities that they were looking to move to.

San Francisco is the city in which the most people want to escape followed by Los Angeles.

New York City and Washington, D.C. were next on the list.

Yes, all of these cities have high housing prices.

However, is it also a coincidence that every city on this list is in a state governed by Democrats and each city is also Democrat-controlled?

Is it also a coincidence that each had harsh Covid policies?

And crime has been rising in each of these cities in the wake of defund the police rhetoric.

As an example, consider what has been happening to the City of Chicago police force.

It has been seeing its own out-migration the last two years.

Source: https://twitter.com/davereaboi/status/1551645951953178625/photo/1

What about the cities people are interested in moving to?

Seven of these ten cities are in states with Republican governors.

Six of the ten cities are in states with no state income tax.

Covid policies in these cities were significantly less onerous than in many others.

The current Redfin research is a continuation of trends we saw between 2020 and 2021 which saw California and New York both suffer net domestic migration losses of more than 350,000 each while Florida gained 220,000 and Texas 170,000.

N

This seems to be confirmation that there is a natural inclination for human beings to want to move from harsher environments to more comfortable environments.

Who would ever have expected that?

A Glimmer of Hope

For most of the last 2-1/2 years I would look at the Covid data and end up being discouraged.

Even when the public health authorities were extolling "the success" of the vaccines I was warning of trouble ahead as I looked at the underlying data.

The warning signal last summer was the surge in cases in the Sunbelt.

We had seen a similar surge in the summer of 2020. If the vaccines were really working that well how come we were seeing more cases in the Sunbelt in 2021 than we did in 2020 with two-thirds of the adult population fully vaccinated in states like Florida?

What we are seeing in Florida and across the Sunbelt this year offers a glimmer of hope.

So far we are not seeing anywhere near the surge in confirmed cases this summer in Florida that we did in the previous two years.

Confirmed Covid Cases in Florida
Source: The New York Times

Yes, the number of reported cases may be artificially low in 2022 due to increased home testing but the number of those hospitalized with Covid in Florida this year is clearly lower than the last two summer surges. That is particularly true for those in ICU.

Although cases in the United States right now are double what they were at the same time in 2020 and 50% more than they were in 2021, we are not seeing a national surge.

The number of daily confirmed cases has remained remarkably stable at between 110,000-125,000 for the last two months.

Source: The New York Times

Hospitalizations nationally right now are slightly higher than they were at this time last year even though cases are twice as high.

Some would argue that this is due to the vaccines. That might be true.

However, it also may be due to the fact that the current Omicron variant is much less likely to cause severe disease and the virus is becoming more endemic.

It might be due to the fact that we have a better understanding of how to treat Covid.

The fact that cases are not surging across the Sunbelt may also be the result of more herd immunity due to the huge numbers of individuals who have now been infected with the virus. This is especially true for those who have been infected since last November with Omicron.

In looking at the data, the glimmer of hope is that the virus may be having a more difficult time of mounting a strong surge than it did in the past.

A pessimistic view would be what I have previously shared based on the views of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche.

He might see that steady level of Covid cases that is not dropping down to previous lows as a warning sign that the virus could be mutating further to make it even more contagious and deadly than we have seen previously.

When I first started studying what Vanden Bossche was saying a year ago he stated that one of the things to watch for as the pandemic unfolded was whether cases failed to drop below previous lows despite the vaccination effort.

He argued that this was an indication that the virus was continuing to mutate and build within the population in what he called a "valley of fitness". He predicted this would invariably lead to another surge in cases as the virus worked around the vaccines and resulted in another variant. 

Are we seeing that occurring in the United States right now in that case levels are higher now than they were at this time of year in pre-vaccine 2020 or immediately after the aggressive vaccine push in the first six months of 2021?

I am not seeing evidence of this thus far in the data to support Vanden Bossche's view that a new, more virulent variant is emerging.

That may change but for now there is a glimmer of hope that brighter days are ahead.

The real test lies ahead in the Fall which traditionally has been the season when respiratory viruses spread most easily.

The Biden administration knows this and have ordered 171 million doses of what is being referred to as an Omicron-specific booster.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/29/us-secures-171-million-omicron-covid-shots-ahead-of-fall-vaccination-campaign.html

This leads to two questions.

Will the virus mutate again by the Fall such that vaccine will have limited efficacy?

How many people are left that are willing to roll up their sleeves for another booster?

Considering that we have already seen the virus mutate from the original Wuhan alpha version to Delta to Omicron we may already be overdue in seeing another significant mutation.

Considering how poorly the vaccines and boosters have performed in limiting transmission and disease prevention I would bet that a good portion of the 171 million booster doses may go unused.

As always, the data will tell the tale over the remainder of the year.

In the meantime, right now I am holding on to the current glimmer of hope I see in the data.

Rewriting History

It seems that we have some public health authorities and politicians who either have very poor memories or have just decided that the only way out for them is to just rewrite history.

Exhibit #1 is Dr. Deborah Birx who, with Dr. Tony Fauci, led the federal Covid response during the first year.

Here is Dr. Birx last week stating that "I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection and I think we overplayed the vaccines ..."

Really?

She then goes on to say even though they don't protect against infection they do protect against severe disease and hospitalization.

However, right after she goes on to state that 50% of those who have died recently were older and vaccinated and tells people the best answer is to get early treatment. That 50% number itself probably understates the real numbers.

If she knew the vaccines were not going to protect against infection why was Birx so adamant that the vaccines were the only way we were going to get to herd immunity?

This is Birx speaking in September, 2020.

“Neither I, nor anybody in the administration, is willing to sacrifice American lives for herd immunity. We’ll get to herd immunity through a vaccine and that’s the right way to do it,” Birx told reporters during a briefing at St. Mary Mercy Hospital in Livonia, Michigan.

Birx was responding to news reports that new White House pandemic advisor Scott Atlas, who is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, had advocated for the Trump administration to lift all social and business restrictions aimed at stopping infections from spreading.

Once enough individuals have been infected and become immune, others are less likely to be infected, creating what health officials call “herd immunity.”

In December, 2020, just as the Covid vaccines were rolling out Birx said this to ABC.

Source: https://twitter.com/Ron4California/status/1552668134779211777

 

These were "highly effective vaccines" yet Birx now claims she knew that they "were not going to protect against infection."

Rewriting history? 

History is showing that Dr. Scott Atlas and others were right. Birx and Fauci were wrong including denying that natural immunity from prior infection was better than vaccinal immunity.  

Exhibit #2 is Dr. Fauci who stated last week that "I didn't recommend locking anything down".

Of course, in October, 2020 there is video of Fauci admitting that "I recommended to the President that we shut the country down".

Source: https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1551946470533656583

If that is not bad enough, last week Fauci said the 2020 Covid restrictions "should have been much, much more stringent."

Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fauci-covid-restrictions-should-have-been-much-much-more-stringent/

Fauci's statement is ridiculous on its face as President Trump told the story a number of times of when Fauci came into the Oval Office and told him that they needed to lockdown the country. Trump said he was incredulous but he followed the recommendation.

Trump also extended the original 15 days to slow the spread on Fauci's recommendation even though Trump was skeptical of the extension.

Trump clearly did not come upon the idea to lockdown the country (or extend it further) on his own.

Of course, even Donald Trump is trying to rewrite history.

Here is Trump stating “I just listened to Fauci and whatever he said, I did the opposite… I came out very good.”

If only that was true.

The sad reality is that Trump did almost everything Fauci told him to do early on because it was "the science".

Trump should have fired Fauci after the first couple of months of the pandemic but he knew that the good Doctor had too much support among the media and Democrats. Trump did not want to take the political risk of taking on Fauci before the election. I understand why he did it but it shows why letting politics determine critical decisions never works out in the end.

I believe that Trump also may need to rewrite history again due to the amount of bragging he did about his role in the development of the "warp speed" vaccines. If you notice, he has recently not been talking about this very much for good reason.

Trump's support for the vaccines may ultimately prove to be a liability in the 2024 GOP primary rather than an asset depending on what happens next with the virus. If that occurs there will be many who will point the finger of blame at Trump and Big Pharma.

Joe Biden has also been rewriting history himself.

Do you remember Biden's famous line during the campaign that he was going to shutdown the virus?

The average number of confirmed Covid cases per capita is actually more than 60% higher during the Biden term than it was when Trump was President.

The vaccines were also available during the entirety of the Biden term. They only were first administered in the last month of the Trump term.

Is this what shutting down the virus is supposed to look like?

That must be the reason the Biden White House is now bragging about the "success" of how many more people are being treated with Paxlovid after they have become sick with the virus.

More people infected, more people benefiting from Paxlovid.

SUCCESS!

This caused one doctor to tweet this.

Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/07/12/fact-sheet-biden-administration-outlines-strategy-to-manage-ba-5/

What about the claim that Biden made that he was not going to shutdown the economy?

It was announced yesterday that second quarter GDP declined by -.9%.

That follows a first quarter GDP decline of -1.6%.

Until this week the general consensus among economists was that a recession was defined as two consecutive quarters of decline in the nation's GDP.

How many of the last ten recessions were defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth?

It was TEN.

Source: https://twitter.com/covid_clarity/status/1552663951699283970

The White House and mainstream media has now decided that is no longer the case.

I wonder why?

Joe Biden said this in a virtual meeting with CEO's and labor leaders on Monday.

"We're not going to be in a recession".

Source: https://www.axios.com/2022/07/25/biden-recession-economy-gdp-growth?utm_campaign=editorial&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Joe Biden is not only rewriting history, he is even attempting to rewrite it before it is even written.

Beware the narrative.

Know the facts.

Know when someone is attempting to rewrite history.

Will The LIV Golf Tour Live?

The professional golf world has been in turmoil since the Saudi Arabian backed LIV Golf Tour announced its formation and began attempting to persuade PGA Tour players to participate in its events.

The LIV Tour is financially backed by the Public Investment Fund which is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. LIV has offered players big signing bonuses to join its tour as well as no-cut events in which every player is guaranteed a portion of a purse that is significantly larger than most PGA events.

Credit: The New York Times

The third LIV golf tour event is being played this week at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey with a purse of $25 million.  $4 million goes to the winner. By contrast, the winner of the PGA Tour's Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit this week will receive $1.35 million of an $8.4 million purse..

LIV represents the roman numeral for the number 54, the score if every hole was birdied on an par-72 course and the number of holes to be played at LIV events (compared to 72 holes at PGA Tour events and major championships).

LIV also uses a shotgun start so all competitors are on the course at the same time and the competition also includes a team event in addition to the individual golf competition.

Greg Norman signed on as CEO and LIV made headlines earlier in the year when it signed Phil Mickelson  to what was reported to be a $200 million contract to join the series.

To put that in perspective, Mickelson had won $94 million in his entire career on the PGA Tour through 2021. Tiger Woods had earned $120 million.

LIV has subsequently signed other high profile names such as Dustin Johnson, Charl Schwartzel, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Louis Oousthuizen, Lee Westwood and Graeme McDowell.

None of these names surprised me as all of these players are in their 40's except Johnson and Schwartzel who are in their late 30's. However, this group would have been the most attracted to the big money guarantees at this stage of their careers as well as the opportunity to play a more limited schedule and still see large pay days.

Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed are three names who have also joined LIV that do not fit that age profile. All would be considered to be in the prime of their careers. However, Koepka and DeChambeau have also had injuries over the last year. 

Have those injuries given them some new perspective on how long their PGA Tour is going to last and it makes sense to lock in a big pay day while they can? As to Patrick Reed...he is Patrick Reed. What more can you say?

Tougher to figure out is why good, young up and coming players such as Abraham Ancer, Talor Gooch and Matthew Wolff who have a lot of golf ahead of them would make the jump.

For the most part, it is easy to understand why the players that have jumped to LIV have done so.

There is a lot of big money being thrown around by the Saudis. 

$25 million. $100 million, $200 million guarantees.

Even $1-$2 million as the reported  money guaranteed to last year's US Amateur champion James Piot is enough to turn your head when the alternative is having to go to the Korn Ferry Tour and try to earn your way on to the PGA Tour with no guarantees of anything but travel, hotel, food and caddie costs each week.

It is tougher for me to figure out what is the end game for the Saudis.

If they are investing a billion dollars or more in a fledging golf tour they undoubtedly expect a return on that investment.

They clearly have to expect that the PGA Tour will ultimately pay them off someway (through a legal settlement) or some type of merger will eventually occur that allows them a return on the money they are putting into this.

This has usually been the outcome when other upstart professional leagues (AFL, ABA etc) set out to compete with established pro circuits.

However, it is difficult for me to see there is enough money in the game to justify the high upfront payments that LIV is paying to players.

The PGA Tour is a lucrative enterprise. It is considered a "business league" by the Internal Revenue Service and operates as a Section 501(c)(6) non-profit.

This does not make it charitable enterprise under Section 501(c)(3) but it does not have to pay income taxes on any profits as long as it is operated to promote the interests of its members (PGA Tour members).

I have reviewed several Form 990's for the PGA Tour that it is required by the IRS to be filed each year.

It was bringing in about $1.5 billion in revenues in 2019 which is more representative than the Covid-shortened 2020 year. About a third of that was in media revenues. 

It has an accumulated surplus on its balance sheet of about $1.2 billion.

Source: http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2022/pga_2020_990.pdf

The majority of annual revenues ends up in the pockets on the players. Money is also spent to put on the tournaments and a host of charities are taken care of each year. Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan makes around $9 million per year.

That sounds like a lot but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodall has been pulling in around $64 million per year and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has an annual salary of $17.5 million.

The PGA Tour funds a pension plan for its members which I have seen some of the players refer to as the most generous in professional sports. The tax return above showed $45 million in expenses in the current year for "Player Retirement Earnings." There are $2.5 billion in assets on the balance sheet in publicly-traded and other securities that should give comfort to the members that future obligations of the PGA Tour will be met.

Unlike the NFL, MLB or NBA the PGA Tour is really run by and for the benefit of the players. There are no owners like there are in those pro leagues. Four players (Rory McIlroy, Charley Hoffman, Kevin Kisner, James Hahn) and the Director of the PGA of America are on the ten-member board and they can hire and fire Monahan or anybody else if they don't like the job they are doing for them.

One would have to argue the PGA Tour has done a very good job of that in that LIV would be willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to players who built their reputations playing on the PGA Tour.

As evidence of that is this chart from Golf Digest that shows the number of PGA Tour players who made at least $1 million in prize winnings has exceeded 100 for six of the last seven seasons (the only exception being the Covid-shortened year of 2020).

Yes, there was a Tiger effect. However, Tiger and the PGA Tour helped make a lot of golfers very wealthy.

Source: https://www.golfdigest.com/story/pga-tour-players-who-earned-1-million-in-2021-purse-increases

The reality of all of this is that any professional league needs talented athletes. However, the athletes also need a venue to showcase their talents.

I wrote a blog post five years ago on why some songs became hits and others did not. 

The biggest factors were exposure and repeated repetition.

The greatest song in the world means nothing if it is not heard a lot...and by a lot of people.

We have always heard that "content is king". Yes, you need content.

However, content means nothing without distribution.

Derek Thompson, the author of the book "Hit Makers" said it this way.

"Content may be king, but distribution is the kingdom".

Tom Cruise might be the same actor performing in a community theatre in New Jersey as he is in Top Gun.

His fame and his fortune is due to the distribution of his films.

He might be the same guy performing at the community theater but how many would see him and how many would care?

The best examples of the importance of distribution over content in recent years is looking at what  happened to Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly at Fox News. They both are talented and had broad audiences at FNC. Today you hear little about either as they try to maintain relevance on their own without the benefit of the FNC distribution and exposure.

The content may be the same. The distribution is no longer there.

In my opinion this is the biggest challenge that the LIV Tour and it players will face.

LIV may have guys who can play the game but it is going to be difficult to get and sustain an audience.

At a minimum, LIV needs a tv deal which it does not have right now. They then need to get people to watch it.

The reality is that the "kingdom" of golf revolves around the four major championships and the the PGA Tour. If you are not playing in these events it is going to be hard to maintain relevancy as a competitor.

The LIV players are going to be irrelevant in the golf kingdom despite the fact they are getting paid a lot money by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The LIV players could remain relevant if they can play and win (or compete strongly) in the four major championships. This would, in turn, burnish the reputation of the LIV.

However, the four majors are select events with specific qualification standards.

For example, all the 30 top players in the PGA Tour FedEx points standings for 2021 were eligible to play in the 2022 US Open, PGA and British Open.

Will the same qualification status apply for 2023?

All the majors have stated they are reviewing qualification criteria for the 2023 championships. It has been suggested that LIV players may be excluded somehow.

If I was providing advice in this regard, I would urge all of the major championships to not change anything. They would just be inviting unnecessary legal challenges.

The fact is that each of the LIV players are gradually going to descend into irrelevancy as the criteria exists today. If the players are not accumulating FedEx points on the PGA Tour and/or Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) points for the LIV events their chances of playing in the majors is going to be diminished.

As it stands now, Talor Gooch is the only LIV player that is in the Top 30 in FedEx points for this season (Gooch is currently #18). However, in that he is not playing any more PGA Tour events this year he may not be in the Top 30 by the end of the year.

The sure way into the majors is to be in the Top 50 World Golf Rankings either for the previous or current season (top 60 for US Open, top 100 for PGA Championship). A high OWGR ranking has previously gotten you into the majors.

However, the LIV Tour events have not been deemed eligible for World Ranking points yet and that does not look like it will happen anytime soon. For one, the OWGR rules require a new tour to be in operation at least a year for its events to be sanctioned. Second, the World Rankings have required that an event be at least 72 holes to qualify and to have a cut after 36 holes. Neither is the case with LIV right now.

Therefore, LIV players are not going to accumulate any World Ranking points over the next year if the traditional rules are followed. As a result, those that are in the Top 50 now will all gradually fall out of the Top 50 and this projection suggests that none of the LIV players will be in the Top 100 by next Spring.

Source: https://www.golfmagic.com/liv-golf/liv-golf-projected-world-rankings-rebels-end-2022

LIV has applied for OWGR status but it might take a year to get that status under the best of circumstances. That means it would be another year before any of the players have significant points to get back into the Top 50, 60 or 100. At that point they will all be attempting to regain relevancy after two years away from the limelight. It will not be easy.

There is one more obvious path for some of the LIV players to get into major championship fields and that is the traditional exemption for past champions.

The Masters (age 65 and under), PGA (willing and able) and British Open (60 and under) provide an exemption for all past champions.

The U.S. Open only provides an exemption for winners from the last five years. LIV players Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau could get into the 2023 U.S. Open if the traditional rules continue to apply next year.

The past champion exemption would provide a path into The Masters for Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Charl Schwartzel and Patrick Reed.

Would The Masters risk changing the rules to exclude these players because of LIV?

If anyone has deep pockets in the sport of golf it is The Masters.

It would make little sense in my opinion to open up the The Masters to potential legal liability unnecessarily by changing the rules to exclude the LIV players.

The same for the other majors.

My guess is that it is unlikely any of these players are going to be competitive especially due to the fact that will have not really been tested for extended periods of time in high pressure golf with premier competition.

As far as the PGA Tour goes, play on the tour can continue as the defecting (and suspended) players fade into increasing irrelevancy.

The biggest concern the PGA Tour has will be maintaining its continuing good relationships with the corporate sponsors who provide the bulk of the money to keep it all running.

FedEx, AT&T, RBC, Coca-Cola and all the corporate sponsors are the ultimate key to all of this.

If sponsors decide to start spreading their marketing dollars to include LIV, the PGA Tour is going to have problems.

However, until that happens, LIV's prospects are not good.

As for LIV's players, I hope they got the money upfront and have good investment advisors to invest the money for their futures.

Their future in golf is likely to be irrelevant going forward.

Some of these guys may have (or could have) been kings of the game.

However, the fact is that they don't rule the kingdom.

And those who control the majors and PGA Tour do right now.

Saudi Arabia and LIV want a piece of that kingdom.

LIV may get some type of monetary settlement from the PGA Tour in the end.

Perhaps a couple of LIV events will be incorporated into the PGA Tour when this is all over.

The PGA Tour may lose its tax-exempt status due to the scrutiny it will be under.

The charities that the PGA Tour supports may end up with less.

However, I will be shocked if an independent LIV Golf Tour exists in three years time.

It is also difficult to see when it is all over that professional golfers in general, the charities supported by the PGA Tour and the overall game of golf will be better.

I am not betting on LIV living long term.

Neither is Lee Trevino.

Masks and Boosters In Our Future?

It seems that the CDC and the media has caught up to what I have been writing about in BeeLine for the last month or so.

Covid cases and hospitalizations are surging to levels much higher than in the previous two summers.

Respiratory viruses don't typically spread easily in the summer months. The exception with Covid over the last two years has been a spike in cases across the Sunbelt as people sought refuge from the heat indoors.

Confirmed cases currently are three times (and more likely much higher due to home tests) the levels last year at this time. Hospitalizations are double what they were last year. Many of these are undoubtedly incidental infections in that the patient is in the hospital for something else. However, that would have also been the case last year.

Last week the CDC announced that more than 50% of the United States was in an area of "high-risk" based on its hospitalizations measures.

Source: https://twitter.com/JasonSalemi/status/1547699811092029447

The CDC then came out with a recommendation that all people in these "high risk" counties wear masks indoors.

It will be interesting to see how many state and local officials and businesses attempt to follow this guidance.

Are we going to see schools attempt to put masks on school children in a month?

How many people are going to buy what the CDC is trying to sell again?

The fact is that there continues to be no scientific study or evidence that supports the general use of masks to prevent the spread of Covid or other respiratory viruses. 

That was the case before Covid ever appeared. It is the same 2-1/2 years later.

For example, University of Louisville researchers used CDC data in a recent study to attempt to support a hypothesis that statewide mask mandates and mask use were associated with lower COVID-19 case growth rates in the United States.

However, the researchers found no significant differences in case growth between mandate and non-mandate states during periods of low or high transmission.

Conclusions: Mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level COVID-19 spread during COVID- 19 growth surges. Containment requires future research and implementation of existing efficacious strategies.

 

I wrote over two years ago about the Canadian Dental Society research that was conducted in 2016 on the use of face masks in dental offices in the prevention of respiratory viruses.

That study found that face masks gave almost no protection to dental professionals from viruses. As you can imagine, there can be extensive generation of airborne material during the majority of dental procedures so this is an important issue for dental offices.

The study also addressed the question as to why face masks have been so universally accepted for so many years by medical professionals if they offered little protection. The answer given was that no one had really studied the issue in decades. It had just been accepted without question and it was not a high profile enough issue that involved big dollars that attracted much research. It was the medical equivalent of an urban myth.

Interestingly, as mask use mandates were increasingly used during the pandemic, the Canadian study was purged from the internet in that it did not fit the narrative.

If you go to the link I originally cited for this study you can no longer read the research because it "is no longer relevant in our current climate."

So much for science.

If you want a real world look at how effective masks are at preventing the spread of Covid I suggest you look at the recent data from Japan.

There is no country that utilizes face masks more than Japan.

The use of face masks were heavily built into the culture of the Japanese in dealing with respiratory issues well before the appearance of Covid.

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/05/20/national/japan-outdoor-mask-advice/

Japan has had near universal face mask usage during the Covid pandemic even after government relaxed the guidelines.

How is Japan faring against Omicron right now?

Japan is reporting almost 200,000 cases per day. On a per capita basis that is over three times what the United States is reporting right now.

Japan has over 82% of every man, woman and child fully vaccinated and 69% boosted.

The latest surge in the U.S. is also surely going to result in more calls for boosters.

We will undoubtedly hear that if more people were boosted we would not be seeing this surge.

The United States does lag a number of other countries in booster uptake.

Compare per capita boosters administered in the United States to a range of other countries around the world--Gibraltar, Israel, U.K. South Korea, Australia, Germany, Portugal, etc.

Now compare cumulative Covid cases in the United States to these same countries.

The United States has reported fewer cumulative Covid cases per capita than all of the countries above that have had higher vaccination and booster uptake.

Does this suggest that the United States should be embarking on a massive booster campaign?

As I have stated from the beginning of the vaccination effort, there may be good reasons for those who are older and vulnerable to be vaccinated (and boosted) against Covid.

However, the risk/benefit equation of the vaccines for the young and healthy is far different.

The data on the vaccines also now seems clear that any efficacy is short-lived.

The vaccines may actually make you more vulnerable to the virus in the first couple of weeks after being administered before providing a protective benefit for several months and then quickly receding to marginal efficacy.

It is yet unclear what continual Covid vaccinations do to your natural immune system.

The suggestion in the data above is that boosters may hurt more than help over the long term.

Despite the data, you can be sure that the public health authorities are going to be promoting masks and boosters leading up to the Fall.

The reality is that they have nothing else to talk about in order to attempt to maintain relevance.

If they were honest, they would admit to the failure of their mask and vaccines guidance.

They will not do it.

They will compound their errors.

We can only hope that the virus is more forgiving than the public will be if Dr. Vanden Bossche is correct on where this goes next.

The Irony Of It All

The irony of it all.

On July 21, 2021 Joe Biden was telling the world that "you're not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations."

On July 21, 2022 the White House announces that double vaccinated, double boosted Joe Biden has tested positive for Covid.

I can relate.

Two weeks ago I tested positive for Covid after avoiding it for over 2-1/2 years.

Unlike Joe Biden and Tony Fauci, I am not double vaccinated and double boosted. I did not take Paxlovid but I did follow some of the protocols from front line doctors who treat Covid regularly.

I also followed a prophylactic regimen of taking daily doses of Quercetin, zinc and Vitamin D for the last two years.

I would like to think that the things I did resulted in my mild symptoms and relatively quick recovery just as I know that Biden and Fauci and others believe the vaccines or Paxlovid kept them out of the hospital. However, who is to really know in any individual case?

My symptoms included some achiness, a low grade fever and being tired. These symptoms lasted for about 36 hours.

After about 72 hours, I felt great but a lingering fatigue came upon me about a day later and stayed with me for about a week with no other symptoms, Simply stated, I just did not have my normal energy for about a week to ten days.

However, less than two weeks after the first symptoms, I was playing 18 holes of golf in 95 degree weather.

I hope Mr. Biden has similar success in his recovery.

I cannot think of anything worse for the country than if he does not have a full and quick recovery.

It would be a devastating blow to the morale and confidence of the nation to see its leader hampered by this virus over 2-1/2 years into the pandemic after so much was promised from the vaccines and Paxlovid.

You have to believe that the public health establishment is living on pins and needles right now with the fear that Biden may not recover quickly.

That is probably not a likely scenario but it would be an event that would have considerable consequences and impact if it occurred. It would almost be the definition of a "Black Swan" event.

There isn't a scenario I can conceive of that would be worse for the public health establishment than for a double-vaccinated, double-boosted Joe Biden to end up with a severe case of Covid considering the narrative that has been promoted over the last two years.

Biden's positive Covid result comes about a month after Dr. Tony Fauci had his own bout with the illness.

Fauci was also treated with Paxlovid but ended up with a rebound case of the disease after taking the standard 5-day course of the drug. He ended up feeling much worse the second time around and took a second course of Paxlovid.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/30/health/covid-paxlovid-fauci-rebound/index.html

Pfizer states that rebound cases are rare so let's hope that holds true for Biden.

I dare say that it will not be good for the PR department of Pfizer if Biden also has a rebound case of Covid after taking Pavlovid and being quadruple-vaccinated.

I have to say that it is hard not to look at the events every day that have unfolded with Covid and not think...

The irony of it all.

Get well soon, Joe.

Your poll numbers are not good but we need you.

31% overall approval in the latest Quinnipiac poll.

Of note, Hispanics only give Biden 19% approval.

His approval with 18-34 year old voters is 21%.

However, Kamala Harris only has a 26% overall favorable percentage in the same poll.

Who would think we would have someone in the White House with a 31% job approval and most Americans fervently wants to make sure that man stays healthy and on the job?

That is probably even truer of those who disapprove of Biden's performance than those who approve.

The irony of it all.

Indeed.

Get well soon, Joe.