Weighing the Benefits and Risks of Vaccines

I predict that one of the biggest political issues of this decade will be whether government can mandate that children (and potentially everyone else) must be vaccinated against certain diseases.

This issue is already gaining momentum in a number of liberal states where Democrats are pushing legislation to outlaw any kind of exemptions (personal belief, religious etc) on vaccinations in order for children to be able to attend public schools.

There is little doubt that vaccines have had an enormous impact in the prevention of serious and deadly diseases.

Smallpox plagued humanity for centuries. 1 in 10 children died from smallpox in France and Sweden in the 18th century.

It was a scourge in the American colonies at the same time. Here is a graph that shows the incidence of the disease in Boston before and after the introduction of the smallpox vaccine in Boston in 1800.

Smallpox continued to plague a good part of the world until a global vaccination program was initiated in the 1960's. The disease was officially declared eradicated in 1980.

Vaccinations against smallpox stopped being given in the United States in the early 1970's. That is why you only see this vaccination scar on people over the age of 50 who were born in the United States. It is generally on the upper left arm.

Credit: Medical News Today

Vaccines had a similar effect on polio which claimed many deaths as well as paralyzed many more around the world.

Polio has been considered eradicated in the United States since 1979 but the disease is still seen in undeveloped countries elsewhere in the world.

However, despite the good that vaccines have done, they are not without risk. As I have written before in these pages, every time a medical intervention (tests, immunizations, prescription drugs, surgery) is undertaken you are taking a risk. That risk is generally worthwhile because it will make you better in the long run. However, you could end up in worse shape because of the intervention.

Unfortunately, I have seen the adverse effects of vaccines in stark detail with close personal friends. Their perfectly healthy and normal 5-month old daughter suffered a devastating vaccine injury from a DPT shot. She has never been able to speak or care for herself in any way. She is profoundly autistic with little functional abilities and requires around the clock care. The lives of our close friends were irrevocably changed forever 35 years years ago.

It is heartbreaking all these years later to remember what the mother told us.

"I saw the needle go in and I immediately saw her eyes roll back into her head. I knew in that instant that our little girl was gone."

If anyone tells you that there are NO harmful effects from vaccines they are not being truthful. Our friends fought and won a gigantic lawsuit against the vaccine manufacturer. Most will have no adverse effects from a vaccine but some will be injured. Some will be permanently disabled. Some will even die. It is a fact. Injecting vaccines into a human body, like any other medical intervention, requires balancing the potential benefits with the possible risk.

The lawsuit that was brought by our friends and others back in the 1980's caused the pharmaceutical industry to go to Congress and threaten that they might stop making and developing vaccines if they were to continue to be subjected to lawsuits from those that were injured by the vaccines they manufactured.

This resulted in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act that was signed into law in 1986 that created a federal no-fault system for compensating vaccine-related injuries and deaths and provided immunity from any lawsuits being brought against pharma companies. The compensation is funded by a "tax" on the vaccines. The pharma companies pay nothing into the fund.

Since that time over $4.2 billon has been awarded for children who have been injured or died from vaccines. The law also requires that any adverse events related to vaccines be reported to a centralized data repository called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and a Vaccine Information Statement (VIS) be provided to the recipient, parent or guardian of anyone receiving a vaccine with a description of the disease involved and the "risks and benefits" of the vaccine.

I understand that advancements in medicine are constantly evolving but I can't help but wonder if the fact that the pharmaceutical companies have been exempted from any liability in the development of vaccines since 1986 has had anything to do with the dramatic increase in the recommended vaccine schedule for children since that time?

Baby Boomers grew up as children and probably only were immunized according to a very limited schedule.

My children, who were all born before 1986, had a recommended immunization schedule that included 24 doses of various vaccines which they all received.

The schedule as of 2018 looked like this and includes 72 total doses. Note that 21 of these immunizations are recommended before 6 months of age. It seems more are added each year.

Many pediatricians suggest today that all of these are necessary. In fact, a good number of pediatric practices will not even allow your child to be in the practice unless all immunizations are up to date.

Why is this?

A lot of doctors honestly and strongly believe in the benefits of all these vaccines. In addition, doctors are under a lot of pressure by the CDC to report vaccination rates in their patients. Very few doctors want to take a public position counter to the CDC despite what they might personally believe. For example, I know of doctors who defer some vaccinations for their own children.

Some pediatricians receive financial rewards from insurance companies where their compliance rates exceed a certain level. There is also no denying that giving vaccinations also brings money into the practice. Of course, a sick kid with the flu also brings in money so I think the financial angle by vax critics is overstated.

Most people trust what their doctors say and do what they recommend with no questions asked. After all, the docs are the experts. What else is there to do? If questioned, most doctors will claim that vaccines are safe and there are no proven links with autism or other adverse long term effects.

Of course, overlaying all of this is the uncomfortable fact that as vaccination rates have increased so have the rates or autism and children with chronic conditions that we did not see 50 years ago.

We are told that there is no correlation or causation. We are told that the thousands of parents who cite vaccines as the reason for their children's disability or autism do not know what they are talking about.

Autism was virtually unknown when I was growing up in the 1950's and 1960's. There were no special education classrooms. Today every school district in America is dedicating millions of dollars to special education programs.

It has to be something that was introduced to the environment or into children's bodies in the last 50 years, doesn't it? What other explanation is there for it?  Some say that it is caused by greater sensitivity and awareness to the issue. That surely is part of it. However, does that explain this massive increase alone?

We have gone from 1 in 10,000 in the 1970's to 1 in 59 children being on the autism spectrum today and no one can tell us why that is?

For boys, it is even worse. It is now 1 in 34 boys.

In the meantime, due to the fact that pharma companies have no liability for vaccine injuries there is not much incentive for them (or anyone else) to do the research and studies to find out if there is a possible link.

One pediatrician in Oregon opened his medical records to an independent study of any link between vaccines and autism in his own practice. Paul Thomas has practiced pediatrics for over 30 years in Beaverton, Oregon and he says he became more cautious about vaccines (most specifically MMR) when he saw several troubling cases of autism in his practice.

Thomas does not require parents to vaccinate and he also does not discourage it. He actually recommends a modified schedule which he calls the "Vaccine-Friendly Plan" which he wrote a book about. The key element of the plan is to utilize a slower evidence-based schedule that specifically calls for no more than one shot containing aluminum at a time. Aluminum is used in many vaccines and is suspected by some to be associated with autism.

Thomas recently commissioned an independent pediatrician, neonatologist and informatics expert to pull the data from the 3,345 patients born into his practice since 2008 for the study.

Out of 715 unvaccinated children, just one was diagnosed with autism. (1 in 715)

Out of 2,629 Vaccine-Friendly Plan (alternative schedule), just six were diagnosed. (1 in 438)

Compare those to the 1 in 59 number above and it does make you wonder doesn't it?

This background may also allow you to better understand why some parents may want to more carefully weigh the decision on whether to vaccinate. Does the benefit truly justify the risk in all cases?

As I have done more research on the subject of vaccines, I have to say it has raised a lot of questions in my mind that I had not previously considered. I also do not understand why it is that anyone who might ask legitimate questions is immediately labeled an anti-Vaxxer.

For example, consider the HepB vaccine that is recommended to be given at birth. Hepatitis B is only transmitted from the mother to the child or through sex and infected needles. What is the purpose of giving this vaccine to a newborn baby whose mother does not have the disease? Does it really have to be given at birth?

I also don't understand why legislatures in states such as California, Oregon, New Jersey and New York are so intent to take away the rights and freedoms of parents who might to want to more closely question the risks compared to the benefits of certain vaccines.

For example, New York wants to mandate that every children born after January 1, 2009 must receive the HPV vaccine and an annual flu shot.

Gardasil, the best known HPV vaccine, has resulted in over 60,000 injuries and 500 deaths according to VAERS. Moreover, the latest data shows that HPV (which is the virus which is said to later cause cancer of the cervix) has been effective in controlling the virus in young women but it is still an open question whether that means that cancer rates will fall over time.

The head of immunizations for the UK Health Service recently said this about the HPV vaccine.

"Due to the long time period between initial HPV infection and development of cancer, it is not possible for trials to use cervical cancer rates as a way to measure how effective HPV vaccines are".

In effect, the trial is being done right now with young women and men who receive the HPV vaccine. It may prove to eliminate the disease. However, in the meantime, there are short term costs in injuries and deaths. Is that cost worth the benefit? Nobody really knows.

Does anyone know enough right now in order to mandate that vaccine?

In addition, the flu vaccine is often ineffective for the current year's strain. If a flu vaccine is mandated for children would you be as comfortable if it was also mandated for you each year? Have you been vaccinated against HepB yourself?

The push by some states to push for stronger mandates on vaccinations has now led to at least one state pushing back the other way.

A bill introduced by the House Majority Leader in South Dakota would eliminate all vaccine mandates in the state that already are in existence. It would provide total individual freedom on this and other medical decisions in South Dakota.

Does a total vaccine exemption make any more sense than a total vaccine mandate?

The entire vaccine question is like many other issues that we see debated every day in the United States.

Where do individual freedoms end and the public interest begin?

We see it on the abortion issue. When does the public interest to protect life override a woman's right to choose?

We see it on gun rights. When does the individual right to bear arms have to be restricted in the public interest?

How do we weigh the competing interests between individual rights and the public interest?

It may be an easy call to mandate vaccinations when you are dealing with a highly contagious disease that has the potential to kill millions.

However, what if we are talking about diseases like measles, chicken pox and the like that a large part of the population has endured in the past with relatively small effect? Or a virus that may cause cervical cancer at sometime in the future where the risk increases substantially the more partners you have over a lifetime?

You also have the question of why it is that, if vaccines are protective and effective, why are those that are not vaccinated considered a threat to those who are vaccinated?

I don't know the answers to most of these questions.

I do predict that the question of vaccine mandates is going to be a big issue in the next decade.

My advice to you is to get better educated on the issue.

Ask more questions of your doctor and read and understand the benefits and risks of what someone wants to put into your body or that of your child or another loved one. There are real benefits in vaccines. However, there are also risks.

Understand that there has been little research on the longer term side effects of many vaccines because there is not enough incentive for anyone to do it. I understand the reasons why the 1986 law was enacted but the unintended consequence may be that no one really has skin in the game to answer some of the tough questions posed above. Pharma companies may have also directed more resources to vaccines for the simple reason that they are more profitable than other products because they bear no liability if things go wrong.

It is also clear that when it comes to vaccines there is a lot more talk about their benefits than there are about their risks. Should there be a more balance conversation on the subject?

If we are going down the road of stronger mandates everyone needs to better understand, and be able to weigh, those risks.

Bookstraps, Billionaires and Brains

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is at it again.

Last week she made headlines by saying that the idiom about someone pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is a myth. She called it a Republican talking point and a cruel joke to suggest that people in the United States have the opportunity to better themselves and get ahead. She further wondered where the idiom came from because she said it is physically impossible for anyone to pull themselves up by their shoelaces or bootstraps.

Of course, she is missing the point. When it is said that someone has "pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps" it is an acknowledgement that they have overcome steep odds and impossible circumstances to succeed by their individual effort and willpower.

One would have to use that term to describe AOC's own rise in the political world. She was a 28-year old bartender who defeated a 10-term Democrat for her House seat who outspent her 10:1.

"Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" is a myth and cruel joke? AOC did it herself. The fact is that achieving an impossible dream is easier to achieve in the United States than in any other nation on the face of the earth.

Why else do millions and millions of people from all over the world want to come here?

AOC also claims that 60% of the wealth in the United States is inherited.

AOC, like most Millennials, believe this falsehood. In fact, a recent study found that 72% of Millennials believe that most millionaires inherited their wealth. 52% of Baby Boomers do as well.

However, the same study found that only 21% of millionaires received any inheritance at all. Only 3% of those millionaires received an inheritance of over $1 million.

It is interesting to note that a detailed academic study on the subject found that 21% of the general population also receive an inheritance at some point. Therefore, millionaires are no more likely to receive an inheritance than any other group.

That study also found that inheritances actually are more meaningful to low income groups than they are higher income groups.

While it is true that richer households do receive greater wealth transfers than poorer ones, as a proportion of their current wealth holdings, wealth transfers are actually greater for poorer households than richer ones. A related finding is that even though white households receive larger wealth transfers than African-Americans, a higher fraction of the wealth of the latter (about a third) comes from wealth transfers than that of whites (about a fifth). Low income households and the young and old (particularly, households age 75 and over) also receive a higher share of their wealth from transfers relative to other groups.

The research indicated that if all inheritance transfers were prohibited by the government, wealth inequality would actually increase! This is exactly the opposite of what AOC and Bernie Sanders would have you believe. This same study also found that about 23% of total wealth in the country was inherited---a long way from the 60% number that AOC quoted.

Why is AOC so wrong in thinking that most wealth is inherited?

The simple fact is that people who inherit money most often don't know how to turn it into more money. They are better at spending it than earning it. They also don't have the same appreciation for how hard it was to earn the money that their heirs did.

Consider the words of Cornelius Vanderbilt who was the richest man in the world when he died in 1877.

Any fool can make a fortune. It takes a man of brains to hold onto it after it is made.

Commodore Vanderbilt was prescient. When he died he left the bulk of his wealth to his son, William H. Vanderbilt ,who doubled his father's fortune through smart management of the family's railroad business over the next decade.

However, William died in late 1885 and it appears that brains were not inherited in equal supply to the wealth that was passed down to the next generations of Vanderbilts.

The Vanderbilt fortune was worth $200 million in 1885. That is equal to over $5 billion in today's dollars.

Within 20 years no Vanderbilt would be among the richest people in America, and 

When 120 of the Commodore’s descendants gathered at Vanderbilt University in 1973 for the first family reunion, there was not a millionaire among them.

The story of the Vanderbilt family falling from fortune is told in the book Fortune's Children: The Fall of House Vanderbilt that I recently saw reference to in an excellent blog post by Nick Maggiulli.

How did the Vanderbilts burn through that rich inheritance?

Maggiulli listed three obvious reasons there were no millionaires left in the Vanderbilt family after a couple of generations got their hands on the patriarch's wealth.

• They spent money like no one else
• They sold assets at the worst possible times
• They never bought an income producing asset

If you need one more fact to show how misguided AOC's view is on where wealth comes from in the United States consider the top 7 names on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans.

Credit: Forbes

Not one of these people inherited any substantial wealth. Moreover, I would suggest there are a few bootstrap stories among them.

In fact, Jeff Bezos' mother was a 17-year old high school student and his father was a bike shop owner when he was born. Bezos worked as a short order cook at McDonald's when he was in high school.

Gates dropped out of Harvard after two years. His father was a successful attorney in Seattle but Gates was a billionaire many times over before his mother passed away in 1994. His father is still alive.

Buffett's father ran a successful investment firm and was a Congressman but Warren Buffett was already wealthy in his own right before his father passed away in 1964.

Of course, most people know that Zuckerberg, Page and Brin all were billionaires before they reached the age of 30. Brin was an immigrant from Russia.

Ellison was born to an unwed Jewish mother in 1944. He was given up for adoption to his aunt and uncle when he was 9 months old. He attended the University of Illinois for two years but dropped out after his adoptive mother passed away. Larry Ellison did not inherit any wealth.

What should you take from this?

If you are to inherit anything it is better to have your parents pass down brain power, ambition, a strong work ethic and values rather than wealth.

What should you take from what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says about this subject or most anything  else she talks about?

If I can paraphrase a little from Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Any fool can be elected to Congress. It takes some brains after one is elected to prove you are not one.

Beware the Narrative

We live in a headline dominated world supported by 10 second sound bites and 280 character tweets.  Most people never get beyond the superficial to see the substance of anything. In fact, a majority are probably not even getting to the surface of most issues, let alone any depth.

Facts have been replaced with narratives that politicians use to support the worldview that they want you to believe. Those narratives ignore facts and instead rely on a story that is told over and over again so as to make everyone believe it is the TRUTH.

Of course, mainstream media and Hollywood are often complicit in promoting the narratives of the liberal left because those narratives are consistent with their own worldview.

The goal is for you to believe the narrative and not consider the actual FACTS.

There is no better example of a narrative than that involving global warming and climate change. We hear it all the time. Our climate is changing like it never has been before. It is getting warmer. Arctic ice is melting. The oceans will rise. Large cities will be under water. Millions will die if we don't do something. Every catastrophe that happens around the world is used to prove the narrative. Fires in Australia. Drought in Africa. Warm temperatures in January in New York.

I have challenged the climate change narrative innumerable times in these pages with actual facts. Despite what you hear in the narrative, the science behind the theory of man-made climate change is far from settled.

I follow Tony Heller of RealClimateSceince.com who is a trained engineer and scientist who posts valuable perspectives on historical trends on weather and climate. Heller posts fact-based data and history on what has actually occurred with the weather rather than a narrative based on speculation.

For example, here is Tony's recent chart to put this year's "warm January" fact in context. Yes, January in the United States was warmer than average this year but the overall average trend in January temperatures has been down over the last 105 years.

Credit: @Tony_Heller

This downward trend has occurred despite a continuing increase in man-made carbon emissions over those 105 years. Something does not add up with the narrative.

How about arctic sea ice? This is what Al Gore said about arctic sea ice in 2007.


The ice cap is falling off a cliff. It could be completely gone in summer in as little as 7 years from now.
                                        -Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize Speech, December, 2007


This is what the arctic ice cap looked like a year after the date when Gore was warning that it could be gone. I included this image in a blog post in which I wrote about a number of inconvenient truths involving Gore back in 2016.

This is a recent graph that shows the arctic sea ice extent that Tony Heller published comparing 2020 to recent years. Note that there is more arctic sea ice today compared to other recent years.

This is why you hear a narrative rather actual facts when it comes to climate change.

You also see the narrative in place with the attacks on the 2nd Amendment. We hear that ownership of guns needs to be restricted and the narrative reaches a fever pitch whenever a mentally ill person uses a rifle to kill people in a mass shooting.

You may hear that nearly 40,000 people die from firearms annually. It is unlikely that you hear that about 2/3 of that number are suicides. You never hear that there are generally less than 400 people murdered by rifles in any given year in the United States. That is killings by all rifles, not just so-called assault weapons. That number also includes all those mass shootings that get so much attention in the narrative.

By comparison, in 2018 (the most recent data available), 672 people were killed by the use of "fists, feet and 'other personal weapons'." Is this ever included in the narrative?

Nevertheless, due to "the narrative", Walmart, Dick's Sporting Goods and other retailers have ceased selling rifles.

Abortion is another issue in which the narrative is utilized. The narrative says that there is no issue more important issue for women. We are told that government funding of Planned Parenthood is critical for vital women's health issues. We are now even being told that abortion should be legal up to (and possibly even beyond) the birth of the child.

According to Planned Parenthood's most recent annual report (2018-19), it performed 345,672 abortions. To put that number in context, there were 3.8 million births in 2018 meaning that the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood is about equal to 10% of all births in the United States. During the year Planned Parenthood received $617 million in taxpayer money representing about 38% of its budget.

Planned Parenthood does provide birth control information and contraceptives as well as breast exams (no mammogram services) and pap smears. These are high volume but low cost services. These services are also a convenient political shield for Planned Parenthood to argue that their funding should not be cut because of these "vital women's health services". However, these health services are not what produces most of the money that comes in at Planned Parenthood---that money is for what is called abortion services in the annual report.

The other fact that is not widely none, or ever mentioned in the narrative, is that the pro-life movement has been very effective itself in challenging abortion with its own narrative.

I was surprised when I saw this recent graph that tracks the number of abortions per woman in the United States.

Beginning in 2014, the abortion rate has actually dropped below the level it was when Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. In fact, abortion has been on a downward trend since 1980 when the election of Ronald Reagan helped to elevate the pro-life movement in the national consciousness. There are fewer abortions today per 1,000 women when abortion has been "legalized" at the federal level than when it was an individual state issue.

When have you ever heard that?

Of course, the biggest narrative that has been playing out every day over the last three years involves Donald Trump.

How many times have you heard this narrative?

Donald Trump is a corrupt, unhinged, racist man who colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election in order to enrich himself.

That narrative led to the appointment of a Special Counsel who was appointed to investigate Trump. Despite spending $30 million and having a team of 19 attorneys (most of who had histories of donating to Democrat candidates) they found absolutely no evidence of any collusion with Russia by Trump or anyone else on his campaign and no evidence to support a charge of any obstruction of justice.

This led to another narrative. Donald Trump is a corrupt, racist man who abused his power as President by attempting to influence the 2020 election by having Ukraine investigate a political opponent by withholding foreign aid and obstructing Congress when it tried to investigate him.

We have now just gone through another four months of an impeachment inquiry, a partisan impeachment in the House with not one Republican vote supporting the articles and an acquittal by a majority of the U.S. Senate on both counts in the impeachment articles.

We are already starting to see the beginning of another narrative. The Senate's acquittal of Trump is now being referred to by Democrats as illegitimate because it was not a fair trial because no witnesses testified before the Senate. However, this ignores the fact that 17 witnesses testified or were deposed before the House Impeachment panel whose testimony (along with 28,000 pages of documentary evidence) was considered and included in the Senate trial record.

The Democrats also fail to mention the fact that the witnesses that President's defense team wanted to call during the House impeachment inquiry were not allowed to testify. Is that what is called a fair trial to begin with?

Make no mistake, Trump uses his own narratives.

"It was a perfect phone call."

"We are building a big, beautiful wall."

"MiniMike", "Sleepy Joe" and "Pochahontas".

Of course, Trump does not have the mainstream media megaphone on his side to amplify his narratives so he  has to use Twitter.

I know many Trump supporters wish he would use Twitter less. However, Trump would have difficulty getting his narratives out there but for his use of Twitter. I have come to accept that is the reality of taking on the Washington and media establishment.

Beware the narrative from whichever source it comes from.

Strive to understand the underlying facts and reality and the context that surrounds the issues.

The best way I know to do that is with a steady diet of BeeLine---the shortest route to what you need to know.

Do your friends a favor and also share it with them. There is a long season of narratives ahead of us.

Better Off Than Three Years Ago?

"Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

Ronald Reagan used this line when he debated Jimmy Carter during the 1980 Presidential campaign.

The voters decided they were not better off.

Reagan won 44 states in a 489-44 the electoral college vote landslide.

The Gallup Organization recently conducted a poll in which it compared changes in the satisfaction level of voters on various issues from the beginning of the Trump presidency (January 2017) to today (January 2020).

In effect, asking voters, "are you better off than you were three years ago?".

I found the results of that poll very interesting.

For example, consider the answers on the economy, the nation's security from terrorism and the nation's defense preparedness.

68% expressed satisfaction with the economy compared to 46% three years ago. (+22 points).

68% also expressed satisfaction with the nation's security from terrorism. (+18 points).

81% are satisfied with the nation's military strength. (+15 points).

However, what I found really interesting were the next four issues on the list.

State of race relations (+14 points).

Crime reduction and prevention (+ 9 points).

The position of blacks and other minorities (+ 9 points).

The way income and wealth is distributed (+ 8 points).

Note that we hear nothing but negative comments from Democrats and the media about how bad race relations, the position of minorities and wealth distribution is supposed to be under President Trump.

However, voters are saying that they are much more satisfied with the way things are with these issues today than they were with President Obama!

Here is the complete list of issues in which voter satisfaction has increased significantly in the last three years under President Trump.

Source: Gallup Poll, 1/27/2020

Just as interesting to me are several issues in which the satisfaction level is lower today than three years ago.

Satisfaction with the amount Americans pay in federal taxes went from 39% to 37% (-2 points).

This is despite the fact that the largest income tax cut in history was passed under Trump in which the bulk of the decrease was targeted to the middle class.

Are voters saying they still think they are paying too much?

Or are these Democrat voters saying they think that tax rates are too low? Of course, they don't want higher taxes on themselves, just on the "rich".

There has also been a decrease in the satisfaction with the level of immigration into the country from 41% three years ago to 35% today (- 6 points).

This is despite the fact that Trump has attempted to enforce the law and curb illegal immigration unlike any of his recent predecessors.

I have to think that this indicates the voters believe that more needs to be done to curb illegal immigration. If anything, this suggests that voters want stronger enforcement of immigration, not less.

Again, this is directly counter to the narrative we hear from Democrats and the media.

Here is the rest of the Gallup list.

Source: Gallup Poll, 1/27/2020

If I was a Democrat strategist I would not take too much satisfaction in this survey.

What issues should they focus on that have potential in this year's election?

It seems that most of the issues they traditionally like to use (the economy, race relations, minority opportunities, income and wealth inequality, less immigration enforcement) are going against them.

Democrats may have some opportunities with the environment or healthcare based on the survey. Abortion is a possibility but decreased satisfaction with the issue may actually have more to do with the radical views of Democrats on late term abortions than anything else.

There are still nine months to the election and a lot can change in that time. When Donald Trump is the President and the leading contenders for the Democrat nomination are 79 years of age (Sanders) and 78 (Biden) as of November that is even truer than in a normal election year.

However, the Gallup survey on the satisfaction levels of Americans today compared to three years ago has to provide Trump and the Republicans with a pretty good level of satisfaction in itself right now.

Gallup is also out with another poll today (February 4, 2020) that shows President Trump with the highest approval rating of his over three years as President at 49%. Obama was at 45% at the same time in his Presidency..

It is interesting to note that Trump was at 39% approval when the impeachment inquiry started in the House in October. Trump was impeached by the House, went through a trial in the Senate and his approval rating went up 10 points in the last four months?

I guess you could say that the Democrats miscalculated on how this impeachment gambit would play out.

In the meantime, voter approval of the Democrat party has dropped 3 points since last September while approval of the GOP surged 8 points to 51%. That is the highest approval rating for Republicans since 2005.

You might also say that Donald J. Trump and the Republicans are also much better off than they were three years (and three months) ago.

How Contagious Is It?

The World Health Organization has officially declared that the coronavirus outbreak emanating from China is a global emergency.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, told a news conference in Geneva that recent weeks have witnessed an unprecedented outbreak which has been met by an unprecedented response.

“Let me be clear, this declaration is not a vote of no confidence in China,” he said. “Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems.”

The declaration of a global emergency triggers recommendations to all countries. It is aimed at preventing or reducing cross-border spread of disease.

Tedros said the WHO was not recommending limiting trade or travel to China due to the outbreak, however.

The WHO may not yet be recommending that travel be limited but it is already taking place. Russia a closed their borders to anyone traveling from China today. Hong Kong did the same three days ago. Other bordering countries such as Mongolia and North Korea have done the same.

Major airlines, including American, United, British Air, Air Canada, KLM and others are no longer flying routes to China.

A 6,000 passenger cruise ship docking at Civitavecchia, Italy was prohibited from having any passengers disembark the ship when a woman from Hong Kong showed signs of the virus. Later tests showed that it was a case of H1N1 flu and the embargo was lifted.

Venues all of China in which large groups of people congregate have closed. Disneyland Shanghai is closed. All 70,000 movie theaters in China are closed. Starbucks has closed 2,000 stores in the country.

In the meantime, China has embarked on a massive quarantine program involving 50 million people.

The human impact of the virus is enormous but if the outbreak of the virus cannot be contained the economic impact will soon add another dimension to the human suffering.

Food shortages are already starting to appear in Wuhan which is the epicenter of the outbreak. The city of 11 million is a virtual ghost town with no activity on the streets. Food is not being delivered and store shelves are not being stocked. Factories are not running. Storefronts are not open. The economic engine of the city is grinding away and it will soon be as big a risk to the citizenry as the virus is.

We often don't realize the precarious perch that our lives are built on. A lot of that is based on the confidence that underlies our economic system. It doesn't take much to disrupt that equilibrium and the confidence that goes with it. When people don't have the confidence to do business, shop, travel and interact, the economy quickly tanks.

For example, look at what has occurred to Hong Kong's GDP since the protests started.

And the protests are small potatoes in comparison to what is going on in China and Hong Kong right now.

We can only hope that one of China's top public health experts is correct when he predicts that the virus outbreak will peak within the next week to ten days.

“I estimate that it will reach its peak in around the next week or 10 days, after that there will be no more major increases,” said Zhong Nanshan, the respiratory disease scientist who played the pivotal role in China’s fight against the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) coronavirus epidemic in 2002-03.

For now, the reported cases continue to increase but the good news is that the rate of increase has slowed the last few days as reported by the The Sydney Morning Herald.

Although more than 1700 new cases were reported on Thursday, bringing the global total to 7700 confirmed cases, the new figure is only a 30 per cent increase on Wednesday's total of 6000 cases.

In comparison, the number of cases confirmed globally increased by about 55 per cent on Saturday and Sunday last week.

It then rose a record 67 per cent on Tuesday this week before the rate of increase began to fall.

Of course, no one knows if this data is reliable. How many cases are there that are not being reported? How much can the Chinese be relied on to be completely truthful on what is the real story?

The key statistic that I want to keep my eye on are the reported deaths from the virus. Those numbers will undoubtedly tell us a lot more about the effects this virus will have on mankind.

After all, if we were to plot the number of cases of the flu in the United States each year we would undoubtedly see a scary graph of incidence.

For example, the CDC estimates that we have seen an annual range of  9.3 million-45 million cases of flu each year looking at the last nine years. This resulted in from 12,000 to 61,000 deaths. 2011/12 had the lowest level of flu cases. 2017/18 had the highest level.

The death rate from the flu is around 1 in 800 cases. More importantly, most people have had the flu and recovered, so it does not produce the fear that an unknown virus can cause.

So far, the death rate from the coronavirus is running at around 1 in every 50 cases (2%). Of course, that assumes the denominator (the number of total cases) is as accurate as the count on the deaths (which I assume is more accurate). That is a lot scarier than a normal case of the flu.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security did an exercise last October in which it modeled the effects of a virulent virus that resulted in a worldwide pandemic. It was a sobering exercise to which we have to hope and pray we never see play out.

However, the beginnings of this viral outbreak in China matched the projections of that exercise a little too close for my comfort. It does clearly show the exponential compounding effects that can occur if a virulent virus is allowed to spread among humans in an unabated fashion.

If the 7,700 cases (and 171 deaths) as of today, that were reported in The Sydney Morning Herald, are accurate we are seeing a slowing of the spread of the virus compared to that cataclysmic Hopkins exercise. I would suggest paying attention to the actual numbers compared to the projection over the next week to get a better sense of where this is going.

Credit: https://twitter.com/Sam_the_Tall/status/1222651198483914766

The number of cases outside of China will also be particularly important. That will be vitally important to contain the virus and its potential global economic effects.

Notice how important that is because the Johns Hopkins projection that was done for a global pandemic quickly gets to 57 million cases worldwide and over 1 million deaths by February 21 with a 2% death rate assumption.

The bottom line is this. Potential pandemics are nothing to trifle with.

There is a reason that China has acted so aggressively in responding to the virus.

It is already clear that the economic cost of the virus outbreak in China will be significant.

The bigger question is how much of that economic contagion will spread to the rest of the world even if the virus is contained?

China has been leading the world's economy for the last 15 years. A good portion of global growth over that period was due to what has been going on in China.

It used to said that "when the United States sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold."

That may still be true but it may now be true of China as well.

The growth of China's economy and the sheer size of its population means that anything that occurs in China today will invariably have reverberations around the world.

Tuomas Malinen of GnS Economics is already predicting in an article in ZeroHedge that it is probable that the coronavirus will push China into recession this year. If that occurs it will undoubtedly affect the export-and-China dependent Eurozone next. This will then put significant pressure on many European banks that have weak balance sheets.

The final question then is can the United States avoid the economic contagion that might be on our way from China (and Europe) even if the viral contagion can be contained?

The year 2020 has barely started and we have an impeachment trial going on, a potential pandemic developing and an avowed Socialist staring to pull away in the Democrat Presidential race according to recent polls.

Is crazy contagious as well?

Middle Class Joe

A continuing theme that the Democrats have used against Donald Trump since he was elected is that he is using his office to advance his personal goals and financial interests. They consistently say he  is putting his interests above the interests of the  United States of America.

What is their core argument on impeachment? He pressured Ukraine and withheld foreign aid because he wanted them to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. They completely ignore the facts that corruption has been rampant in Ukraine for years and the suspicious fact that  his son, Hunter Biden, was paid millions of dollars as board member in Ukraine at the same time that Vice President Biden was responsible for overseeing U.S. aid to Ukraine in the Obama administration.

It has also been reported that Hunter Biden leveraged his father's position for business deals with many other countries that put a lot of money in his pocket. The same was true for other members of the Biden family. Hunter Biden also got seat on the Amtrak board. His experience to do that--"he had spent a lot of time on Amtrak trains".

Democrats shrug their shoulders and say it is just nepotism. It is just the way it is. Think for a minute if Donald Trump's sons announced a deal for a new real estate development in Shanghai, Moscow or Kiev? Would that just be called nepotism? Have the Trump's been able to do any significant deals since their father became President? Absolutely not because they would be put under the media microscope on anything they did. The double standard that applies as between Trump and Biden is outrageous.

I have previously documented the fact that Forbes recently reported that Trump has lost an estimated $1.4 billion in net worth since he became President. This is despite the fact that most Americans have gotten a lot better off since he became President.

Donald Trump did not need to be President in order to live a spectacular lifestyle. He already enjoyed the luxuries that most occupants of The White House only experience for the first time when they live there. If Trump ran for President because he wanted to enrich himself or burnish his brand, he made a very bad decision.

Let's compare Trump with "Middle Class Joe" Biden and see who has really enriched themselves (and their families) from public service.

Joe Biden was first sworn is as a United States Senator in 1973 at the age of 30. He held that office for 36 years before becoming Vice President under Barack Obama for eight years ending in 2017. Joe Biden did nothing but receive a federal government paycheck for 44 years.

Biden has always tried to portray himself as the blue collar, working man's friend with humble roots from Scranton, Pennsylvania. He likes to call himself "Middle Class Joe".

You might wonder how this man of humble origins, who also did nothing but take a public paycheck for 44 years fared in his first two years in the private sector?

I was curious so I recently took a look at Biden's tax returns for the last several years. His 2015 tax return can be found here.

Biden reported total income of $396,552 on his joint return with his wife Jill in his last year as Vice President in 2016.

In 2017, in Joe's first year in the private sector in 45 years, Joe and Jill reported $11,037,751 in total income. Not bad work if you can find it. It must have been due to the Trump economy.

In 2018, the Biden's income decreased to $4,580,459. I am guessing that Joe scaled back his speaking engagements, lobbying and consulting gigs as he already had his eye on announcing his Presidential campaign. After all, if you are going to run as "Middle Class Joe" it probably does not make sense to have a tax return showing an eight-figure income. Keep it to seven-figures or less.

How did Joe come into all of this income? Who paid him? What did he do?

The bulk of it is somewhat of a mystery based on his tax return filings. He used some intermediary corporations to hide the answers. The financial disclosure form he was required to file when he announced is candidacy for President answers some questions, but not all.

Biden clearly was getting paid for speeches. Look no further than what former Presidents like Clinton, Bush and Obama have gotten paid for an hour at the podium to know that it pays well.

Biden's campaign states that he has given less than 50 paid speeches since he left office. However, even if we assume he was getting $150,000 per speech, that would only amount to about half of the income that he has reported on his tax returns since he left office. His financial disclosure indicates that he received $1 million in payments for book tour events in 2018 alone.

Biden's tax returns do not provide the information as to the source of most of his income. That is because Biden set up two limited liability companies (S corporations) to shield the sources of his income. That structure also saves Biden taxes. This is how one report described how that works to Biden's advantage.

The Bidens have used their home state’s financial privacy laws to shield his income from public view, by setting up two tax-and transparency-avoidance vehicles known as S corporations.

The money Biden made from book deals and speeches flowed into the S corporations and was then remitted to Biden and his wife as “distributions” rather than salary. When money is funneled through an S corporation, the recipient doesn’t owe Social Security or Medicare taxes on it, nor can the source of revenue be traced. (In addition to the distributions, the Bidens drew relatively small salaries from the S Corporations: under half a million dollars, for which they owed self-employment taxes.)

Biden reported a $145,883 in salary as well as $9,490,857 in trade or business income from CelticCapri Corporation in 2017. He reported $100,000 in salary as well as $557,882 in trade or business income from Giacoppa Corporation.

Biden also reported a salary on his tax returns from the University of Pennsylvania for both 2017 ($371,159) and 2018 ($409,368). Biden is reported to be the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practices professor at Penn.

The National Review reported that Biden is receiving this salary, that is two-and-a-half times the average Penn professor, despite the fact that he is not even teaching any classes. What did Biden do for the money? The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that is was “for a vaguely defined role that involved no regular classes and around a dozen public appearances on campus, mostly in big, ticketed events.”

Penn might have actually gotten a good deal compared to what other colleges and universities paid Biden for speeches. We may not be able to get info on Biden's speaking fees from his tax returns but some universities have disclosed what they paid Biden in their public filings.

The University of Buffalo paid Biden $200,000 for a 30 minute speech and a 45 minute Q&A in October, 2018. Other speaking fees from educational institutions in 2017/2018 that have been disclosed---Brown University ($92,642), Long Island University ($100,000), Southern Connecticut State University ($124,515), Vanderbilt University ($180,000) and Drew University ($190,000).

One humorous item I found in the 2017 tax return filing was that an amended return had to be filed over a year after the original return. The original return did not include Biden's income as the Vice President for the first 20 days of the year.

This is the exact disclosure in the amended return on why that was necessary.

They are saying that the U.S. Government did not send Biden a W-2? Seriously?

I think it is more likely Joe lost it.

However, the blame for failing to include this income on the return seems to fall more on the tax preparer. When I prepared and reviewed tax returns for a living I always had the prior year's return in front of me to compare to the current information. If something was on last year's return but missing from the current data my first question was always to ask, "What changed?"

One area Biden has improved on with his higher income is his charitable giving. Biden was famous in the past for his penurious charitable contributions that usually amounted to no more than 1%-2% of his income.

In 2016, Biden claimed a deduction for charitable contributions on his tax return that amounted to just 1.5% of his income. Since he left the White House his giving increased to a little over 8% in 2017 and 2018. Do I dare wonder how much of that increase was due to the fact that Biden knew he was going to run for President and knew that he would be releasing the information? I am not going to do that.

I also don't think it is fair to just make an example of Biden and the tremendous income and wealth that has come his way since he left office.

There is a well-established pattern for a number of public office holders in this regard. Look no further than Bill and Hillary Clinton or Barack and Michelle Obama. The Obama's just bought a $11.7 million summer home on Martha's Vineyard. I have chronicled the income the Clintons raked in a past BeeLine blog post.

It is no different with others who cash in with books, board seats, speeches, consulting or lobbying jobs. It is not just Democrats. Look no further than Republicans like George W. Bush, Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, John Kasich or Jason Chaffetz . Or CIA Director John Brennan or FBI Director James Comey. They have all cashed in on some form or fashion on their government service. Most recently, John Bolton wants to cash in with a "tell-all" book.

Biden's former boss, Barack Obama, was known for telling wealthier Americans that they should pay more in taxes. He famously stated in a 2016 speech that "you didn't build that" income and wealth by yourself.

"If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen," 

Obama said that a lot of the success  of those who were better off was due to the American system of education, infrastructure and others who helped them along the way. Therefore, they should be willing to pay more in taxes.

This is a particularly popular talking point with Elizabeth Warren  and Bernie Sanders as well.

However, if you think about it, there is no one that argument applies to more than a former public official that goes into the private sector and capitalizes on their name, their contacts and their experience than people like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Paul Ryan or John Brennan.

In each case, their entire personal career or brand equity has been earned in a public sector job that the American taxpayers paid for. For these people it is really true that "somebody else made that happen." For most, everything that they earn after leaving the public sector would not have occurred but for the taxpayers funding that prior experience.

The Democrats seem to be desperate to raise more in taxes.

My suggestion is that we start first with a surtax on any earnings of former elected or Senate-confirmed executive branch appointments wherein a percentage of post-public sector earned income would be subject to an income tax surcharge.

That surcharge would be equal to 1% for each year of federal service. For example, Biden had 44 years of federal service before he started writing books and giving speeches. Under this proposal he would be subject to a 44% surcharge on this income.

Doesn't it seem fair that the taxpayers should get some return on the investment they made in Joe Biden over the years that allowed him to be so much in demand by the private sector?

After all, "the somebody else that made it happen" were the American taxpayers.

I can't think of anything that would be fairer when it comes to taxes.

How could "Middle Class Joe" object?

Coronavirus and China

There is good and bad news about the coronavirus epidemic in China.

The bad news is that this appears to be a particularly virulent virus strain. It is also centered in Wuhan, China which is the home to 11 million people. We are talking about a city that is larger than any in the United States but chances are that 99% of Americans did not even know it existed until last week.

The virus also apparently has a long incubation period (14+ days) before any symptoms manifest themselves. In the meantime, the subject is contagious even if they do not know they are sick. In that 11 million people live in Wuhan it only takes a small percentage of those people to travel elsewhere for the virus to spread.

We are already seeing that effect as we see the confirmed cases spread out from Hubei province in China where Wuhan is located.

* As of Jan. 27 the death toll in China had risen to 80, with 76 in Hubei province, authorities reported. Another 2,744 people in China had been infected: As of the end of Jan. 26, there were 1,423 confirmed cases in Hubei province.

* Thailand and Hong Kong have each reported eight cases of infection; the United States and Macau have five each; Taiwan, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia each have reported four; France and Japan three each; Vietnam and South Korea two apiece, and one each in Canada and Nepal.

* No fatalities have been reported outside China.

The five suspected cases in the United States are in California (3), Washington state and Chicago,

The most effective way to stop an outbreak of a virus such as this one is to aggressively isolate and quarantine those that are ill so as to not infect other people. They need to be identified, treated aggressively by medical professionals, and isolated.

It always seems that new virus strains originate in China. Each year's flu strains are expected to start there.

A lot of that seems to be due to the massive number of people in China and the fact that there is often more daily exposure to animals in China compared to Western countries. Many of these viruses originate in animals and mutate to humans. That is why we have heard of the swine flu, bird flu and the like in the past.

Ground zero for the coronavirus is reportedly a seafood market in central Wushan in which unauthorized animals were also sold. There have been some reports that the virus has been traced to bats that were eaten with soup in that market.

I can't believe that I missed eating that when I was in China a year ago!

More troubling are reports that this virus may have escaped from a Chinese biolab that is located in Wuhan and was involved in studying the highest risk pathogens in the world.

U.S. scientists were worried about the risks that pathogens like this could escape from facilities like this one as evidenced by this article in The Scientist back in 2015.

As a result, the United States ceased funding any of this "gain-of-function" research back in 2013 because it determined the risk of creating a pandemic was much greater than any information gained from the research.

It is worthwhile to note that at that time this decision was made there was research being done in the U.S. on an engineered coronavirus. Note as well where the surface protein came for that virus.

Ralph Baric, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, last week (November 9) published a study on his team’s efforts to engineer a virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of to one that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice, according to the team’s results, which were published in Nature Medicine.

One more piece of bad news is that fact that the Chinese Communists are not known to be the most transparent government on the planet. If they are admitting to 2,700 cases how many are we not being informed about?

Enough bad news.

What is the good news?

If there is any place on earth where a quarantine and mass mobilization can be carried out to combat this disease it is in China where the totalitarian government has total control of the population.

China has already banned all travel in and out of Wuhan. The city has become a ghost town. They have established quarantines in a dozen other cities cities as well such that some 50 million people are locked down.

China also has announced that they are going to build two hospitals each with over 1,000 beds in Wuhan.

What is in incredible is the Chinese say that these hospitals will be able to accept patients in a couple of weeks!

How is that possible?

Here is a photo of the site work on the first hospital taken on January 24..

Credit: Reuters

China's Wuhan city, the centre of the outbreak of the new coronavirus, will build a second dedicated hospital to treat patients.

Construction has already started on the first facility, with enough space for 1,000 patients, which is expected to be completed by 3 February.

The second, which is designed to have 1,300 beds, is due to be finished within three weeks. 

This may seem like an unrealistic time frame, however, China has a history of quickly building hospitals at times of crisis.

During the SARS outbreak in 2003, 7,000 people worked day and night in Beijing, taking just seven days to build the Xiaotangshan facility.  

The Chinese are known for being able to construct buildings and bridges very quickly.

Graham Allison in his book, “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?" has some incredible examples of Chinese construction capabilities.

"Between 2011 and 2013 China both produced and used more cement than did the US in the entire twentieth century. In 2011, a Chinese construction firm built a 30-story skyscraper in just 15 days. Three years later, another firm built a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days” 

Allison also observed that it took nearly four years for a bridge near his office at Harvard University that crossed the Charles River to be replaced. The Chinese took only 43 hours to replace a substantially larger 1,300 ton bridge in China in November, 2015.

It just goes to show you have much you can accomplish when the government controls the entire labor supply and you don't need to worry about governmental regulations and permits and dealing with agencies like the EPA, OSHA, HHS and CMS to approve your projects.

Let's hope that China can control the spread of the virus. It is a significant challenge considering the population density in that country and the fact that this outbreak began over the Lunar New Year holiday when many people are traveling.

If the live in the United States some additional good news is that the 2019 Global Health Security Index ranks it as the best prepared in the world to deal with a pandemic although it found that the no country was fully prepared. These are the ten countries that are most prepared.

China ranks 51st out of 195 countries in the index.

If you want to be best prepared personally I thought this was a good article from a reporter who covered the SARS epidemic in China in 2003. It is has some good tips and precautions that you can use to protect yourself. These make good sense even if we are only talking about avoiding seasonal flu or colds.

Let's hope and pray that China and other countries around the world can keep the virus in check.

In the meantime, stay safe and be healthy.

This and That

A little diversion from the impeachment trial since it appears not many people are paying much attention anyway.

The impeachment trial is only getting about half the viewers that the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings did.

However, most of the viewers seem to be keeping up to date on the trial on Fox News Channel rather than on the other cable news networks. I thought this was something that Democrats across the country have been waiting to see for three years? Why are they not tuning in on their favorite cable news channels?

Another question---how does CNN stay in business with these ratings?

Cable News Ratings
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Source: ShowBuzzDaily.com

Perhaps the following factoids I have come across recently will be a little more interesting than what is going on in the U.S. Senate right now.


Women in the Workforce

Women now make up 50.4% of the workers in non-farm payroll jobs.

Industry sector where women make up the highest percentage of employment.

Education and health services    77.4%
Government                                57.9%

Lowest percentages.

Construction                               13.1%
Mining and Logging                   13.8%


The Social Class Gap in Marriage

There is a lot of talk about the wealth and income class divide in the country but you don't hear anyone speaking about the social class gap in marriage. Marriage provides many benefits to society but an important one is that it is provides significant economic benefits to those in the union. Two cannot live as cheaply as one but two living in one household provides significant cost efficiencies.

Another reason that those with less education find it harder to make ends meet is that there is a widening gap in those who are married based on education levels. The gap is also widening with time.

Who is talking about this?

Credit: https://twitter.com/NickWolfinger/status/1216159863077658624

Space, Mountain and Sea

More humans have been in space than have summited Mt. Everest without oxygen or sailed non-stop around the world solo.

The NBA Proves That Incentives Drive Results

Incentives drive results. It is one absolute when considering human behavior.

Human beings respond to incentives. We quickly understand what is in our interest and what is not, and we respond accordingly. We will act in accordance with what is in our best interest. Period.

Fro example, look at this change in shot selection in the NBA (top 200 shot locations) between 2001-2002 and today.

You provide a 50% incentive for a shot from behind the arc and see what happens. The result--you either fire away from outside or take the layup or short bunny shot underneath. There is almost nothing in between.

Credit: https://twitter.com/kirkgoldsberry/status/1217109175894831105

Mike Bloomberg's Money

Mike Bloomberg is going to spend $11 million on one ad during the Super Bowl.

To put that in perspective, this is what the other leading Democrat candidates have spent on tv advertising thus far in this primary election cycle.

Berne Sanders        $6.9 million

Joe Biden                $2.0 million

Elizabeth Warren    $1.8 million

In other words, Bloomberg will spend more on that one 60 second ad than Sanders, Biden and Warren have spent on all their tv ads COMBINED thus far.

Bloomberg has already spent over $200 million on tv advertising. He also is funding a campaign staff that employs more than 1,000.

Where does he stand in recent polls? All of these surveys were released last week.

Survey USA                9%

Economist/YouGov     5%

The Hill/Harris X        7%

Morning Consult         8%

How can Adam Schiff and the other Democrat House Managers compete with facts like this (and that)?