Federal Government To Stop Paying For COVID Shots, Tests, & Treatments
The Biden administration is starting to transition the federal government away from paying for Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments, with the shift likely to materialize this fall.
“One of the things we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about in the last many months…is getting us out of that acute emergency phase where the US government is buying the vaccines, buying the treatments, buying the diagnostic tests,” White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said at a US Chamber of Commerce Foundation event on Tuesday.
“My hope is that in 2023, you’re going to see the commercialization of almost all of these products,” Jha added. “Some of that is actually going to begin this fall, in the days and weeks ahead.” Earlier this year, a White House request for another $10 billion in pandemic response funding stalled in Congress.
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journalreported that, on Aug. 30, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will host a meeting of pharmaceutical companies, state health departments and pharmacies to start sorting out how to make the transition, which also include regulatory adjustments.
Referring to the broader transition, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America SVP Anne McDonald Pritchett told the Journal “there are issues of reimbursement, equitable access to vaccines and treatment, and distribution that need to be resolved.”
“Resolving the issue of equitable access” loosely translates to figuring out how to still give many tests, vaccines and treatments away to the uninsured and others — so drug companies will still be reaping some benefit from governmental redistribution of wealth where Covid-19 is concerned.
The federal government has already stopped buying monoclonal antibody treatments, such as Eli Lilly’s bebtelovimab. The list price is $2,100 a dose, and Lilly is working with HHS to transition to direct sales to health care providers. At the same time, “Lilly is coordinating with the US government to identify solutions so that uninsured, lower-income individuals can access bebtelovimab,” an Eli Lilly spokeswoman told Bloomberg.
Pfizer and Moderna racked up $79 billion in Covid vaccine sales in 2021 alone, the Journal reports, with sales juiced by public health officials’ false claims of efficacy, coupled with coercive vaccination requirements imposed by governments, schools and employers.
Moving forward, Covid-associated prices will be subject to negotiations among drug-makers, pharmacy benefit managers and insurance companies. Kaiser Family Foundation executive vice president Larry Levitt told the Journal the net effect will likely be higher prices and higher insurance premiums.
No idea why WSJ thinks that now the pharma companies are going to make more money. They already profited insanely off of C-19, and a lot of people didn’t even want the shots for free.https://t.co/fcwsyehXMh
However, after TheWall Street Journal reported on Thursday that planning for the transition is getting underway in earnest, shares of vaccine makers slumped: Moderna was down 5% and Pfizer down nearly 2%. “Moderna will be at a disadvantage as the Covid-19 vaccines enter the commercial market, as it goes up against Pfizer, which has a substantially larger commercial infrastructure,” said Josh Nathan-Kazis of Barron’s.
While the inept government middleman was in the mix, Pfizer and Moderna were happy to churn out far more vaccines than the market demanded. Between December 2020 and mid-May of this year, US federal agencies, pharmacies and states threw out a whopping 82.1 million Covid-19 vaccine doses.
If brighter days are ahead for the U.S. economy, why are so many tent cities popping up all over the nation? At this point things are so bad that even the New York Times is admitting that “America’s homelessness problem has the makings of an acute crisis”. That article goes on to explain that our homeless population is steadily rising. Tonight, hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans will be sleeping in tents, under bridges, in overcrowded shelters or in their vehicles. Of course there are many that are so addicted to drugs or alcohol that they just sleep wherever they end up passing out. This is a tragedy that is growing with each passing day, and it is only going to get worse in the months ahead as the U.S. economy slows down even more.
Earlier today, I was truly stunned by a Fox News article about what is going on in Portland right now. Tent cities are literally taking over entire neighborhoods, and many residents are “resorting to selling their homes” as a result…
Residents in a Portland, Oregon, neighborhood are resorting to selling their homes and moving due to homeless encampments right outside their front doors.
“It’s a little scary because I know there is mental illness and that concerns me,” North Portland resident Maria Inocencio told KGW8.
Residents of North Portland said at least three families on one street have left in recent days due to the homeless camps, and KGW8 reported seeing for-sale signs up and down streets.
Portland was once such a beautiful place, but now it has literally been transformed into a hellhole.
Needless to say, Portland is far from alone. From Seattle all the way down to San Diego, communities all along the west coast are being plagued by relentlessly growing encampments. In many cases, such encampments are magnets for drug addicts and other societal outcasts.
But this is not just a west coast problem.
Let me give you are couple of examples. In recent weeks, tent cities have been popping up all over Pittsburgh…
“We want immediate action. We want to see people in homes. There’s a humane way to deal with homelessness,” said Pittsburgh City Council president Theresa Kail-Smith.
Homeless camps are popping up all over the Northside.
You’ll see them on the Riverfront Trail to Millvale.
Another makeshift tent city popped up underneath the Andy Warhol Bridge.
And in Fayetteville, North Carolina one burgeoning homeless camp recently made news because it features quite a few registered sex offenders…
There are 843 registered sex offenders living in Cumberland County. For dozens in Fayetteville, their home is a tent alongside the road.
Deputies in the Sheriff’s Office Sex Offender Registration Enforcement Unit (SOREU) learned the group of offenders are homeless and stay in a tent community along where the busy Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway (Highway 87) goes over Gillespie Street. Some live under the overpass while others live in a nearby field beside Gillespie Street.
From coast to coast, this is becoming an enormous issue.
And the truth is that it is only going to intensify as the months roll along.
In 2008 and 2009, millions of Americans lost their jobs as the economy plunged into a major downturn.
Once those people lost their jobs, many of them could no longer afford their homes and soon found themselves on the streets.
I wish that we would never have to see anything like that again. It was truly a very dark chapter in our history, and countless people had their lives turned completely upside down.
Unfortunately, it is starting to happen again.
As I detailed earlier this month, large companies are starting to lay off workers in substantial numbers.
This even includes Facebook. This week, we learned that Facebook recently used a very unique method to lay off one group of workers…
A group of about 60 contractors who work with Facebook learned they were laid off this week after they were chosen ‘at random’ by an algorithm.
The layoffs are the latest example of Big Tech reining in spending and hiring, as just days ago Apple let go of about 100 recruiters.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also recently said he will weed out underperforming employees with ‘aggressive performance reviews’ as the company braces for a deep economic turndown.
I suppose that is one way to avoid personal responsibility for firing someone.
“Don’t blame me – it was the algorithm”.
If a big corporation that is swimming in cash like Facebook already feels forced to “thin the herd”, I think that is a very bad sign for the employment market as a whole.
In the months ahead, I think that there will be a lot more layoffs all over the country.
And this comes at a time when the housing market is starting to collapse.
Existing home sales in the United States have now fallen for six months in a row, and the numbers for the month of July were downright depressing…
Sales of previously owned homes fell nearly 6% in July compared with June, according to a monthly report from the National Association of Realtors.
The sales count declined to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 4.81 million units, the group added. It is the slowest sales pace since November 2015, with the exception of a brief plunge at the beginning of the Covid pandemic.
Sales dropped about 20% from the same month a year ago.
I anticipated that home sales would be lower than last July, but a 20 percent drop is pretty catastrophic.
And as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates, it is probably inevitable that the numbers will get even worse.
The stage is being set for a historic economic meltdown, and I would encourage you to do what you can to get prepared for it.
2008 and 2009 were extremely bitter.
What is coming will likely be even worse.
And as the economy deteriorates, tent cities will continue to take over more neighborhoods all over America.
But don’t look down on those that are living in tents.
With a run of bad luck, you could be one of them too.
* * *
It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
The Great Resignation Is Coming To An End As Workers Return Back To Their Old Jobs
So it turns out the grass isn’t always greener on the other side…
That’s what many who quit during “The Great Resignation” are apparently finding out, judging by a new Bloomberg piece that is highlighting how many people are returning to the old jobs that they quit over the last couple of years.
4.2% of all new hires for companies that advertised jobs on LinkedIn were boomerangs in Q1 this year – meaning employees that returned to their old jobs – the report says, This compares to 3.3% in 2019, showing clearly that people are returning to their old jobs. Firms are even “boasting” on places like social media, the report says.
Companies are writing blog posts and sharing photos of employees returning to their respective firms. Dan Black, EY’s global leader for talent attraction, commented: “On social media, you can very easily click back in and say, ‘Hey, I’d love to talk to someone again about maybe reengaging in employment with the firm.”
The move goes to show that the recent jobs data isn’t necessarily indicative of a strong economy, but rather could mean the opposite: that people are returning back to work because rising rates, inflation and recession are starting to mire their quality of living.
Rachel Bentley, a 31-year-old from Austin, Texas who went back to her job at Duo, told Bloomberg: “I just realized that startups don’t really offer a lot of family benefits that larger companies do.” By going back she was able to reconnect with old friends…oh, and double her pay.
Adam Kail, founder and chief executive officer of Harrison Gray Search and Consulting commented on the trend: “The hard reality is that at 30, 40, or even 50, it’s really hard to change careers and maintain the lifestyle you’re used to. I’ve seen people switch careers drastically but in a short period of time realize, ‘I’m not as happy doing something I like more, but with my pay a third of what it was before.’”
Matthew Wragg, CEO of engineering and tech recruitment firm Gattaca, told Bloomberg he has hired 6 former employees back over the past three months. He commented: “You’ve got that cultural cognizance. They know the culture. They know the operating processes.”
A study of about 30,000 employees who returned to their old jobs found that employees generally performed with the same efficiency as before they left the first time. This has been prompting companies to examine why these employees left in the first place. Poor cultural fits or underperformance generally don’t solve themselves upon coming back to a firm, so companies want to be cognizant of such reasons for leaving.
Mark Royal, a senior director at consultant Korn Ferry, offered up tips for those wanting to go back to their old jobs: “You want to be framing it in terms of what you’ve learned in the role you’re now leaving and what you can bring back to your former employer and why that will be valuable for you both.”
First question you should address: at what point, exactly, did you learn that free Covid money wasn’t going to last forever and how did this effect your search for a job…
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee demanded in an Aug. 11 report that the federal government do more to respond to alleged “election misinformation,” which they say has weakened the capacity of election offices across the United States to carry out their official duties.
The committee report claimed that so-called misinformation efforts led by President Donald Trump and other conservatives have overwhelmed election offices and caused an uptick in threats against election workers (pdf). To respond to this, Democrats said, “strong federal leadership is needed.”
“Lies and confusion about the 2020 election are an ongoing threat to representative democracy,” the report states. “Misinformation and disinformation drive fraudulent efforts to cast doubt on legitimate election results, increase threats to election administrators, and create pathways for bad actors to subvert our democratic elections.”
In the same strain, the report added, “Lies about our elections, whether intentional falsehoods or pervasive misunderstandings, endanger both the democratic system and the people who administer our elections.”
Threats Against Election Workers Allegedly Increased
A key focus for Democrats in the report is the ways that the alleged misinformation about the 2020 election has increased threats against election officials and made it more difficult for them to do their jobs.
“Election officials have been continuously vilified by conspiracy theorists led by former President Donald Trump and his supporters,” the Democrats wrote in one section of the report.
In a subsection about “disinformation campaigns” carried out by “malicious domestic actors,” the report dives deeper into Democrats’ claims on this front.
“Leading up to the 2020 presidential election, misinformation about all aspects of the voting process surged,” they wrote. “The coronavirus pandemic created a unique environment for voter confusion as states sought to adapt their rules on registering and voting by mail, creating opportunities for online misinformation to spread widely across the country.
“After the election, some elected officials leveraged voters’ distrust to question the election results by espousing the ‘Big Lie’—the false claim that former President Donald Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election. These elected officials carried a dangerous message: that election administrators were to blame for the ‘stolen’ election.
“Election administrators informed the Committee that responding to the influx of threats and disinformation required hours of work and increased security that made it more difficult for them to do their jobs. The President of the Election Officials of Arizona reported to the Committee that responding to the surge of concerns about voting by mail was ‘distracting us to the point where we can’t get our real work done.’ As each new false allegation of voter fraud was released and spread online, ‘the angry phone calls and threats start anew.’
“The President of the Florida Supervisors of Election told the Committee they ‘have been consumed with responding to numerous public records requests, debunking election myths, and increasing voter education efforts to strengthen voter confidence in the elections process.’
“The mounting pressures facing election workers and administrators are compounded by a vicious cycle of misinformation intended to reduce public faith in our election system.”
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) did find in an investigation that more than 1,000 election workers reported contacts that were “hostile or harassing.”
However, though the report implies that the uptick has caused a great deal of violence, DOJ findings showed that only about 11 percent of those reports—about 110 cases—met the threshold for federal criminal investigation.
Election Integrity Laws Targeted
A key critique in the Democrats’ report involved efforts by state legislatures to tighten their election security laws in the wake of continuing concerns over the integrity of the 2020 election.
In late 2021, Democrats in Congress attempted to respond to this spurt of tighter election laws—which many Democrats characterized as a “new Jim Crow”—with a series of ill-fated bills to strengthen federal control over elections.
Though those efforts failed one by one to win enough support in the Senate, where Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) joined Republicans in opposing several of the proposals, Democrats have remained frustrated with the litany of new laws. The Aug. 11 report makes clear that these laws are still a prime target for disgruntled Democrats.
The report contends that “dangerous, misinformation-driven, so called ‘election integrity’ laws … threaten to undermine the voting process in future elections.”
Since the 2020 election, the report says further down, “state legislators have … introduced and passed hundreds of election laws based on the Big Lie. Some of these bills would give partisan legislators more control over non-partisan election systems, while simultaneously making it more difficult for election officials to effectively do their jobs.”
Throughout the report, Oversight Democrats leave no doubt as to whom they blame for the rise in “misinformation”: President Donald Trump and his conservative allies.
“Misinformation led to violent death threats against local election officials, often inspired by comments from right-wing politicians and activists, leading many experienced officials to leave their positions,” the report claims.
In another section, Democrats named several conservative commentators who have cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election by name.
“In Florida, Alex Jones, Roger Stone, and Mike Lindell spread conspiracy theories about one election official for responding to false allegations of fraud,” they wrote in an effort to bolster their claim that conservatives are largely responsible for issues experienced by election officials.
‘Fraudulent’ Audits
Democrats in the report targeted two election audits that took place in Arizona and New Mexico in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Despite being approved by relevant elected officials in the state, Democrats claimed these audits were “fraudulent.”
The most important audit in the aftermath of the 2020 election took place in Maricopa County, Arizona—a blue stronghold in the state, which President Joe Biden reportedly won. Maricopa County was at the center of electoral controversies, spurring Republicans in the Arizona State House to order a full audit of the county’s results.
The other prime audit targeted by Democrats in the report took place in Otero County, New Mexico.
These audits, Democrats said, were “partisan” and “highlight the grave harm that could result from such efforts.”
Committee Democrats said that the audits in Arizona and New Mexico were the result of “a network of malicious actors … encouraging elected officials across the country to undermine the integrity of their election systems.”
“The audit [in Maricopa County],” Democrats claimed, “undermined public confidence in elections and fostered efforts across the country to suppress votes and subvert elections.”
These “fraudulent” audits, Democrats said, “generate a feedback loop of more misinformation, increased pressure on election officials, and disruptive legislation, paving the way for bad actors to overturn valid election results.”
They warned of the possibility of such audits increasing after the 2022 elections, which they said could further damage trust in the electoral process.
“Fraudulent audits and unfounded refusals to certify election results may multiply during the 2022 midterms, further damaging trust in the electoral process.”
‘Strong Federal Action Is Needed’
In concluding their report, Democrats argued that “strong federal action is needed” to counter these alleged threats to the democratic process they say is caused by misinformation.
“The threat posed to American democracy by election misinformation has changed and increased dramatically in the past two years,” they wrote. “The Committee’s investigations make clear that the greatest current threat to democratic legitimacy now comes from lies by domestic actors who seek to convince Americans that their election systems are fraudulent, corrupt, or insecure.”
They describe the “urgent need to implement a federal whole-of-government plan to support local and state election officials as they respond to misinformation and share accurate information with voters. This response must also include vigorous law enforcement efforts to protect election officials from harassment and violence.”
Democrats then laid out a litany of suggestions for actions by both the president and Congress.
“The President should designate a lead federal agency or office to support state and local efforts to counter election misinformation,” they wrote, in a plan reminiscent of the now-defunct Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board, which was shut down after critics blasted the planned body as reminiscent of George Orwell’s “thought police” in the novel, “1984.”
“[The president] should direct relevant agencies to coordinate with the lead agency on overall approaches, chains of communication, and best practices for advancing accurate information about the election process.”
The report continues with the suggestion that “all relevant federal agencies should use their authorities in coordination with the lead agency to support state and local election officials’ efforts to counter misinformation during and after elections.”
Oversight Democrats also recommended the continuation and expansion of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) “rumor control” webpage.
“During the 2020 election, the [CISA webpage] sought to counter election misinformation,” they wrote. “CISA should continue to update this site to respond to national misinformation narratives. Trusted local voices, however, are the most effective messengers against misinformation.”
The report went on to say that CISA’s misinformation team should coordinate with state authorities to create state-level “rumor control” websites.
Further, Oversight Democrats demanded that the DOJ “aggressively pursue criminal and civil enforcement against those who threaten or harass election administrators.”
To aid in this, Democrats recommended the creation of a DOJ task force that would aid local officials in determining which federal charges they can bring against those who threaten or harass election workers.
Finally, on a congressional front, Oversight Democrats called for expanding funding allocations to election offices across the country, in addition to strengthening already-existing laws against threatening, harassing, or harming election officials.
“To counter malicious actors threatening violence against election officials, Congress should also enact meaningful statutory penalties for anyone who threatens election officials and administrators,” the report said.
Failed Efforts to Change Election Law
The items targeted by the report—allegations of misinformation, attacks on legally ordered election audits, and on election integrity legislation passed in state legislatures across the United States—fit into the larger context of a string of failed efforts by Democrats during the 117th Congress to strengthen federal control over elections.
Election integrity bills have been a focal point for attacks by Democrats, who have said that the legislation constitutes a “new Jim Crow.”
Over the summer and early fall of 2021, when many legislatures were considering and passing such legislation for the first time, Democrats put forward a litany of bills designed to counter this alleged threat.
Among many other provisions, that bill would declare Congress has unilateral authority over the conducting of elections in any areas where state and federal prerogatives clashed.
The bill also would have forbidden illegal aliens from facing legal consequences for efforts to vote illegally, allowed for election day voter registration, and permitted convicted felons to vote.
This bill, by far the most expansive piece of election legislation put forward by Democrats, passed the House along party lines but failed in the Senate after Manchin refused to lend it his support.
Other bills, including the House-created “John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act” and a compromise bill created by Manchin, would have gone substantially less far—largely reinstating parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that were struck down in 2013 as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder.
Like the For the People Act, these too failed to win enough support in the Senate to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Republicans have been almost unilaterally opposed to Democrats’ election schemes, which they have said are an effort at “federalizing” elections.
Thus, even if Congress were to move ahead with a legislative response to Oversight Democrats’ claims, it is unclear whether the bill would get very far in the upper chamber.
Because of GOP opposition, it is likely that any such effort by Democrats will fail for the foreseeable future, short of the party gaining a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate.
Adderall Supply Crunch Reported At Hundreds Of US Pharmacies
Wall Street’s favorite drug of choice is cocaine Adderall, a stimulant that allows traders, analysts, and bankers, working long hours to power through the day with maximum productivity, faces a critical “supply disruption.”
Bloomberg reported the National Community Pharmacists Association surveyed 358 store owners and managers about purchasing Adderall and generic versions of the brand between July 25 and Aug. 5, which revealed that 64% said the amphetamine is on backorder.
In late July, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., the largest seller of Adderall in the US, said it encountered “supply disruptions” of the drug, though expected the situation to be resolved in the near term.
Symphony Health has stunning data that shows the massive rise in prescriptions filled for Adderall, nearly quadrupling over the last decade. As of 2021, more than 41 million prescriptions were filled, up 10% from a year ago — perhaps the latest increase has to do with remote work trends post-Covid.
Bloomberg noted the FDA has yet to report an overall shortage of the amphetamine, though the federal agency said it’s aware of Teva’s delays.
For the cubicle junkies on Wall Street that consume copious amounts of legal drugs, such as Adderall, you might want to pay attention to Teva’s supply crunch.
Saudi Aramco reported Q-2, 2022 earnings this week and set tongues wagging with the sheer amount of cash being generated in its daily operations. Net income of $48.4 bn, Free Cash Flow of $34.6 bn for the quarter, and $65 bn for the first half, substantially eclipsed year-ago numbers of $22.6 bn and $40.9 bn for the same period. All of this was driven by price realizations for crude topping the $113.00/bbl mark for the quarter, exceeding year-ago prices ($67.90) by ~66%.
What was noteworthy, and documented in a recent Wall Street Journal article, was the company’s capital allocation budget toward increasing production remained largely unchanged at the lower end of its previously announced range of $40-50 bn for 2022. The Journal article went on to note-
“To be fair, $40 billion is a lot, much more than in 2021, but Aramco is very flush. It earned more than $65 billion in free cash flow in the first half of this year. That spending also includes diversifying into natural gas, wind, solar and blue hydrogen. And while capital discipline is laudable, surely if management really believes that oil demand is growing for the next decade, it should at the very least accelerate plans to expand its maximum sustainable oil capacity to 13.0 million barrels a day, currently set for 2027.”
Where the Saudi mindset appears to depart from their oil-producing cousins on the other side of the planet, is what is to be done with the excess cash now being realized. While U.S. shale producers are raining wealth on their shareholders, in the form of stock buybacks and special dividends, KSA-94% owner of ARAMCO, has focused on paying down debt, and diversifying its energy portfolio. In some ways mimicking the actions of the mega oil producers like ExxonMobil, (NYSE:XOM) Chevron (NYSE:CVX) and BP (NYSE:BP), by delving into alternative energy forms.
The supermajors, tired of being clubbed by the climate alarmists, and having totally bought into the Paris Accord Net Zero by 2030 dictums, have been diverting capital away from legacy sources and toward cleaner energy forms that raise their ESG scores. Author of, The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity, Terry Etam, summarized their plight in an article carried in the BOE Report discussing the coming gap between supply and demand-
“There is little producers can do to help out. Their ‘inventory’ – oil and gas reserves – is in incredibly high demand, and is being bid up in price. What would help alleviate this situation is to find and develop more reserves, but the world’s cultural elite, the group that dominates western political schools of thought, has ‘scientifically’ linked any weather event – anything at all – with climate change, which is linked to ‘fossil fuel combustion’, which is therefore bad, and the mere suggestion of increasing production is unacceptable.”
In this regard, the supermajors have been “Greenwashing” their portfolios in some cases and beginning to transition them in others. Here they depart from the Saudis who intend to straddle the gap between petroleum and green energy into the foreseeable future.
In spite of a publically asserted view by Aramco CEO, Amin Nasser that oil demand will grow for the rest of this decade, KSA appears to be in no hurry to accelerate the timetable for achieving the 13 mm BOPD upper threshold set for 2027. Instead, KSA has embarked on an ambitious decade-long quest to diversify its economy away from its sole reliance on oil and gas, choosing a multi-pronged approach that includes hydrogen, wind, and solar.
One area where they are focusing their efforts is in the production of hydrogen-H2. A Financial Times-FT article notes that the Saudis plan to dominate the production of H2, a few years hence. With its abundant supplies of gas nearby the City of Neom, a Blue-H2 plant is being built with $110 bn of capital. This plant is planned to take 2.2 bn cubic feet of gas daily from the supergiant Jafurrah gas field, for processing Blue H2. It is forecast to come on line in 2026.
Another massive hydrogen project will produce Green H-2, with power supplied by a 99-turbine wind farm. SP Global discusses this in an article focusing on Acwa Power’s 240K mt/ton per year, green hydrogen project that will make 1.2 mm MT of ammonia. It also is expected to start production in 2026.
Finally, solar is thought to have unlimited potential in the Kingdom. It makes sense as the sun shines brightly there more than 300 days per year. Accordingly, KSA is fielding a number of new solar farm projects getting underway. The sovereign wealth fund of the Kingdom just this year let two awards for a total of 1 GW IPP One went to Acwa Power for a 700 MW farm at Al-Rass and a second smaller, 300 MW farm at Saad. The Kingdom has a goal of installing 54 GW of solar generation by 2030.
Solar is also finding industrial uses as the Glass Point complex takes shape. This 1.5 GW project, the biggest solar farm in the world will power an aluminum smelting plant designed to use the solar mirrors on water-filled pipes to produce solar steam. This will save approximately 600K tons of carbon annually.
Your takeaway
It is fairly clear from the decisions that KSA is making about the capital allocation for renewable forms of energy that their feet are firmly planted in both camps. The higher price regime that has settled on the oil market since 2021 has provided the cash to fund the projects we have discussed, that will fuel the Saudi Vision 2030 initiative.
At the same time, like their shale counterparts in the U.S., they are committed to an orderly development of their legacy oil reserves in a way that will preserve value as far into the future as possible. That’s just good stewardship.
What this means is that in spite of entreaties by world leaders including the American president to produce more oil to lower prices, oil producers in the U.S. and in Saudi Arabia are seemingly determined to hold the line on capital spending. This will have the effect of keeping supplies tight and prices higher than they otherwise would be.
China’s Endless COVID Hysteria Is A Dark Experiment In Social Conditioning
There are many people that will say that Americans “rolled over” in the face of covid restrictions and vaccine pressures despite extensive evidence that neither of these things had any effect on stopping or stalling the pandemic. But the notion of American pacifism is simply not true. If it were then the US would be looking a lot more like China right now.
Growing opposition to meaningless covid lockdowns and the vaccine passports was a mainstay in the US that made government enforcement impossible. Joe Biden’s attempt to introduce federal vax passport rules for businesses failed miserably, red states defied the lockdowns within a few months of the start of the pandemic and the states that kept restrictions in place had HIGHER rates of infection while their economies sank. When it became clear to the establishment that millions of Americans were not going to comply, they had to back off.
Even blue states and cities have been forced to acknowledge that the farce is over; Los Angeles County tried to reintroduce mask mandates recently and the measure collapsed in failure as many municipalities said they planned to ignore any new ordnance. Covid’s median Infection Fatality Rate of 0.23% was not enough of a threat to convince the public to abandon their constitutional rights.
Without the millions of courageous people that refused to comply our country might look very different today. The CCP has faced little public opposition over their draconian covid rules, and when they do, they don’t worry much because the population is completely disarmed. This has resulted in a veritable nightmare world for the citizenry. In fact, it almost seems like an experiment to find out how much psychological torture and oppression human beings are willing to endure.
Mandate cheerleaders boasted endlessly about how China effectively stopped the spread and was ready to reopen while the western world floundered because we refused to submit and accept medical tyranny “for the greater good.” Now these same people are silent as China goes though an array of outbreaks and lockdowns that cycle perpetually. In the meantime, most of the west has reopened and some places (like dozens of conservative states) have been open well over two years. Remember when leftists and foreign governments said we would be dying off in the streets and ruing our decision to follow the science rather than the hysteria? Yeah, the great cleansing of conservatives they were hoping for never happened.
Open authoritarian systems require dramatic participation by the people being controlled. They have to want to be locked down, otherwise the system cannot continue and it will eventually be toppled. One has to wonder, do the Chinese people even remember anymore why they are locking down? Or, have they just accepted the mandates as the new normal?
Currently, mass covid testing is a regular practice in most major population centers in China. Almost every large indoor business or government building requires proof of a negative covid test. This incessant testing is part of China’s “zero covid” policy, and has led to testing booths in almost every neighborhood.
China has been perfecting the use of QR codes and tracking apps to keep the public cataloged; without these apps and codes a Chinese citizen would find it impossible to get a job or participate in the economy. They would die from starvation first; the minuscule chance of dying from covid would be the furthest thing from their mind.
Though PCR testing often reads asymptomatic cases as exactly the same as full blown infections, the CCP does not recognize the difference and treats every case as if each person is Patient Zero in a zombie apocalypse. For example, a six-year-old boy with asymptomatic covid tested positive and was found through tracking apps to have visited an IKEA store in Shanghai a couple of days earlier. So, rather than admitting that the testing and tracking is a failed system that does nothing to prevent covid spread, CCP authorities instead tried to lockdown the IKEA building with hundreds of people inside for a week. Here was the result:
Testing madness has even spread to the animals. The government is now requiring testing for 5 million fisherman as well as testing of the FISH being delivered by commercial fishing vessels to Chinese ports.
The image of a fish being swabbed for covid is rather hilarious, but it’s important to note that the CCP probably isn’t stupid enough to believe that covid is transmitted through seafood. More likely what this is about is initiating a firestorm of public conditioning to convince the population that covid is around every corner and under every bed forever. The goal here is to engage in a constant fear campaign to make the people more compliant. It is an assessment to see what the government can get away with. And, in China at least, they can get away with quite a lot.
The Orwellian horror that China represents has essentially killed their tourist industry. Millions of potential foreign visitors now fear that they could be trapped within China’s borders if they time their visit to coincide with another surprise mass lockdown. China’s economy suffers extensively from their lockdown culture, but the CCP does not care. The experiment is more important than anything else.
This will never end. Once a government obtains this kind of all pervasive power they will stop at nothing to keep it. While the US has many problems to deal with and many elitists in positions of authority to unseat, at least we have a chance. Some places, like China, are so poisoned by complacency that they can’t escape the boot; it has already landed on them.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday filed a motion to quash a grand jury subpoena requiring him to testify as part of an investigation into the actions of former President Donald Trump after official results in the 2020 presidential election showed that then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden had won.
Kemp had received a subpoena on Aug. 4 after a voluntary interview scheduled for late July was canceled.
“[T]he Governor agreed to a voluntary interview to be held on July 25, 2022, but when counsel for the Governor asked reasonable questions of the [District Attorney’s] Office regarding the scope of that interview, the DA’s Office unilaterally canceled the interview and issued the Subpoena,” attorneys for Kemp said in the motion (pdf) filed on Aug. 17 in Fulton County Superior Court. “Why the DA’s Office acted so abruptly is unclear.”
According to an exhibit in the motion, Kemp has been asked to testify before the grand jury at 9 a.m. on Aug. 18.
Kemp’s lawyers argued the subpoena should be quashed because it is “barred by sovereign immunity.” The subpoena also “improperly seeks to invade established common law executive and attorney-client privileges,” and is “being pursued at this time for improper political purposes,” they wrote.
“Georgia courts have no authority to compel a sitting Governor to provide testimony about matters involving his official duties due to sovereign immunity,” the motion reads. “Even if that were not the centuries-old law of this State, the Subpoena at issue is improper, and due to be quashed, because its timing is neither driven by a genuine investigative need for information nor compliant with the established ethical rules governing prosecutors and election cycle investigations.”
Chief Judge Christopher Brasher of the Fulton County Superior Court in January authorized a special purpose grand jury, as requested by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, “for the purpose of investigating the facts and circumstances relating directly or indirectly to possible attempts to disrupt the lawful administration of the 2020 elections in the State of Georgia.” The grand jury was authorized to begin on May 2.
The DA’s Office back in April 2021 had “informed counsel that the DA’s Office was interested in meeting with Governor Kemp to discuss a telephone call between the Governor and former President Donald Trump,” Kemp’s legal team noted.
The team provided a timeline outlining the correspondence that took place between Kemp’s counsel, Brian McEvoy, and a number of aides to Willis.
“While the special purpose grand jury was only recently authorized, the DA’s Office has been investigating the events surrounding the 2020 Presidential election for at least a year and a half,” Kemp’s lawyers said in the motion. “During that time, and well before the Subpoena was issued, Governor Kemp consistently attempted to engage with DA’s Office and to voluntarily provide it with relevant and appropriate information regarding its investigation … the DA’s Office ignored, denied, or otherwise frustrated these attempts time and time again.”
Kemp’s lawyers alleged that the Fulton County DA’s Office “through delay and artificial deadlines … has engineered the Governor’s interaction with the investigation to reach a crescendo in the middle of an election cycle.”
“This timing cannot be ignored given the Governor’s repeated efforts to engage with the DA’s Office prior to 2022 and even before announcing his re-election campaign,” they said in the Aug. 17 motion.
From Marcus v. Swanson, decided today by the Kansas Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Gordon Atcheson, joined by Presiding Judge Stephen Hill:
In this case, we must apply defamation law crafted 40 years ago to a decidedly 21st century set of facts. A plastic surgeon [Swanson] asserted that a “review” a disgruntled former patient [Marcus] posted on an internet site falsely impugned his professional reputation. A jury sitting in Johnson County District Court agreed and entered a $15,000 verdict for the physician. The district court set aside the verdict because the physician, who continued to maintain a full schedule of patients, did not prove any actual harm to his reputation as a result of the post—a necessary component for a successful defamation claim under Kansas law.
Under the First Amendment, a state may allow prevailing plaintiffs to recover “presumed damages” even in the absence of specific proof of harm to reputation, especially when it comes to speech on matters of private concern. Generally speaking, this happens under the “libel per se” doctrine, which in most states allows plaintiffs to recover such presumed damages if the statements fall within some specific categories that are seen as especially harmful, including allegations of incompetence or misconduct in one’s profession. (Note that the parties in this case agreed that this speech was on a matter of private concern, though the defendant could have argued that public consumer complaints are on matters of public concern, as many courts have indeed held.)
But Kansas law has rejected this principle as a matter of state law, see Gobin v. Globe Publishing Co. (Kan. 1982), and the majority held that this was binding here:
Basically, Dr. Swanson attempts to craft a rule that would permit a plaintiff to prevail on a defamation claim in some circumstances without showing actual harm. Under his approach, a plaintiff would have a judicial forum to prove the falsity of the challenged statements when the publisher acted with an evil purpose and could recover nominal actual damages and, perhaps, punitive damages. Such a formulation of defamation law would benefit Dr. Swanson in this case. More broadly, the rule would offer a path for name-clearing vindication in some cases and, in that way, would be similar to libel per se.
Rather than relying on the message communicated, as does libel per se, Dr. Swanson’s rule would turn on the publisher’s pernicious intent in choosing to communicate a defamation whatever its content. Despite Dr. Swanson’s characterization otherwise, he has asked us to change Kansas defamation law, albeit in an intriguing way. Because common-law doctrine defines the scope of permissible defamation claims, we cannot simply cast aside what the Kansas Supreme Court has declared the law to be.
Dr. Swanson’s point on appeal also implicitly suggests libel per se may serve a significant remedial purpose in defamation law, especially in the age of the internet. Anyone with a computer and access to the internet can reach an extraordinarily large audience with stunning immediacy and a degree of permanency that outstrips other means of publication. Those tools offer a soapbox and megaphone that reach millions—not just passersby on the town square or recipients of leaflets handed out in front of the state capitol or even readers of a full-page advertisement in the print edition of The New York Times such as the one that prompted the Sullivan case. That ability to communicate carries with it an extraordinary power to promote what may be frivolous or profound or good or malevolent.
In laboratory conditions, the marketplace of ideas is supposed to be self-regulating in the sense the intrinsically sound will drive out the unsound. But the marketplace doesn’t necessarily function that way in the real world. Defamation law, in turn, provides a tailored remedy to persons besmirched in public forums, especially when simply putting out a counter-narrative may be an ineffective antidote for particularly corrosive falsehoods. That is, the marketplace sometimes works too slowly or not at all, and some statements about some people are so obviously wrongful, such as false representations demeaning them in their chosen occupations, that their very publication arguably should permit vindication in a judicial forum. But the law should not be so onerous as to stifle vigorous and even controversial debate on matters of public concern. Balancing those competing and undeniably valuable objectives typically falls to the courts in fashioning defamation law.
As this case illustrates, the internet has radically altered how the forces that drive the marketplace of ideas operate. Given the epochal change, some courts have closely examined whether and how libel per se may provide a needed check on those forces in certain circumstances. They have chosen to retain libel per se, at least in cases involving private parties and private matters…. [Other cases have rejected libel per se.] … We do not mean to offer some veiled suggestion Kansas defamation law should be revised and simply repeat our observations that things are quite different now than they were when Gobin was decided.
Regardless of those observations, we are bound to apply the common law as the Kansas Supreme Court has presently defined it. On that basis, we reject Dr. Swanson’s argument that the jury’s finding that Marcus acted maliciously in the traditional tort sense salvages the verdict in his favor without proof of any actual damage to his reputation.
Judge Sarah Warner dissented in part, concluding that “there was sufficient evidence presented at the trial to allow the defamation claim against Marcus to go to the jury”:
Marcus left a Yelp post, including a one-star rating and a lengthy narrative, on Dr. Swanson’s practitioner page and the page for his medical practice. The post stated that Dr. Swanson was a “monster” who was unlicensed and unprincipled and who had committed medical malpractice. The jury found Marcus’ post to be defamatory—the information in the post was false and exposed Dr. Swanson to public contempt or ridicule or deprived him of the benefits of public confidence and social acceptance. The jury also found the post to be willful and malicious—Marcus intended to injure Dr. Swanson and did so without any reasonable justification or excuse. Though Marcus cross-appealed, she has not challenged these findings. We thus accept them as true.
The only question that remains is whether there was evidence that Marcus’ Yelp post injured Dr. Swanson’s reputation. After being instructed on this element of a defamation claim, the jury found Dr. Swanson had proven reputational injury and awarded him $15,000 in damages. The district court and the majority of this panel disagree with the jurors’ assessment. But viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Dr. Swanson, as our standard of review requires, I trust the jury’s finding as one informed by the evidence, reasonable inferences, and common experience.
Dr. Swanson presented evidence at trial showing that Yelp is a review-aggregator platform. Yelp users leave reviews of businesses, along with a corresponding star-rating, with five stars being the highest rating and one star the lowest. The platform then highlights certain reviews as “recommended” commentary and deemphasizes other reviews that the platform does not recommend. Yelp also provides each business with a representative star-rating based on the users’ submissions.
For whatever reason, Yelp highlighted Marcus’ defamatory post as a “recommended” review. Neither Dr. Swanson nor Marcus provided any evidence about what criteria Yelp uses to determine whether a post will be recommended or not. But regardless of Yelp’s internal criteria, Marcus testified that she posted her statement on Yelp because she wanted other people to see it. And after Yelp highlighted her review as recommended, Marcus refused to remove the post at Dr. Swanson’s—and then his lawyer’s—request. A reasonable inference from this testimony is that Marcus created her post, and then insisted that it remain, because she wanted to influence other people’s views about Dr. Swanson and his medical practice.
Dr. Swanson testified that he was concerned enough by the post that he and his staff went through significant—though unsuccessful—efforts to remove it. This included “hundreds” of hours of his and his staff’s time.
One of Dr. Swanson’s patients testified that when she saw the Yelp post, she felt “concerned that it might have a negative effect on his practice” and talked with the doctor so “he knew it was out there.” … It is true, as the majority points out, that—despite Marcus’ post—this patient sought and received treatment from Dr. Swanson a second time. But her testimony regarding reputational harm did not focus on her decision to receive treatment; it concerned the post’s impact on Dr. Swanson’s overall Yelp presence….
Dr. Swanson also provided evidence about the effect of Marcus’ post on his Yelp star-rating. He testified that before Marcus’ post, his star-rating—essentially a snapshot of his aggregate business ranking—was 5 stars. But after Marcus’ 1-star post, his star-rating dropped to 3.5 stars. Dr. Swanson testified that without Marcus’ post, he would have a 5-star rating….
I find this evidence sufficient to demonstrate reputational injury. Marcus created her Yelp post intending for people to see and be influenced by it. She refused to remove the post when it was highlighted by the Yelp platform because she knew more people would see her post and be influenced by it. Dr. Swanson’s patient reached out to him because she was concerned about the post’s negative impact. This combination of evidence, without more, may have danced on the razor’s edge of speculation. But Marcus’ post also affected Dr. Swanson’s reputation in a real, measurable sense: It reduced Dr. Swanson’s Yelp star-rating from 5 to 3.5 stars. Though people might reasonably disagree about how all this evidence should be interpreted, it is sufficient—in my view—to support the jury’s finding that the post harmed Dr. Swanson’s reputation….
[T]he majority opinion notes the absence of evidence relating to the precise monetary impact of Marcus’ post on Dr. Swanson’s practice. But in doing so, the majority conflates reputational injury and economic loss. While Kansas law requires a person to show actual injury to prevail on a defamation claim, courts have never limited reputational injury to monetary losses—a reality the majority recognizes. In fact, Kansas law contemplates the opposite—that reputational injury can (and often does) include noneconomic harm [such as impairment of reputation and standing in the community, personal humiliation, and mental anguish and suffering] ….
There is no question that noneconomic injuries can be difficult to quantify, regardless of the type of claim or issues raised. But courts routinely entrust juries with this task, whether it be in assessing pain and suffering in personal-injury cases, reputational injury in defamation suits, or other noneconomic injuries such as emotional distress. And Marcus does not dispute the suitability of the jury’s $15,000 damage award—a factual assessment to which appellate courts show great deference. She argues that Dr. Swanson’s defamation claim fails as a matter of law, asserting there is no evidence to support the jury’s finding that Marcus’ Yelp post injured Dr. Swanson’s reputation….
Here’s the majority’s response to Judge Warner’s argument:
[The dissent’s] discussion does no more than elaborate on Dr. Swanson’s argument that it “stands to reason” Elysia Marcus’ Yelp post must have diminished his professional reputation. The argument trades on speculation and assumption—not facts. The trial record and the dissent are bereft of colorable direct or circumstantial evidence supporting a diminution of reputation. The dissent, however, does backhandedly make a case for why presumed damages might reflect good policy in cases similar to this, allowing individuals falsely demeaned in their trade or profession to clear their names in district court proceedings without having to prove actual reputational harm. The dissent really rests on a call for restoring libel per se in at least some circumstances….
For all the trial record shows, visitors to the Yelp page may have routinely dismissed the post as a hysterical rant unworthy of credence or the work of a gallivanting internet troll randomly lobbing fake bombshells for his or her misguided amusement. And those skeptical visitors likewise would have discounted Dr. Swanson’s aggregate rating of 3.5 stars as unrealistically low as a result of the unfounded negative review. Ultimately, the notion that somebody somewhere must have been adversely disposed toward Dr. Swanson because of the post cannot pass for evidence of actual reputational harm. If that were the law in Kansas, widespread publication of a falsehood alone would be sufficient without evidence of any diminution of reputation….
A loss of business (and the resulting economic harm) could be circumstantial proof of a reputational injury if the downturned came on the heels of the publication of a defamatory statement, particularly if the statement attacked the subject’s professional abilities. Here, Dr. Swanson offered no evidence of the kind and apparently maintained a full practice notwithstanding Elysia Marcus’ post.
We also pointed out that Kansas cases recognize other forms of circumstantial evidence, such as the physician who asserted he stopped receiving inquiries from recruiters inviting him to consider positions heading departments at major hospitals and was no longer asked to write or peer review articles for professional journals. Those lost career opportunities would suggest a loss of professional standing or reputation without necessarily entailing any direct economic harm. Here, again, Dr. Swanson offered no comparable evidence….
Against that backdrop and lack of evidence, we pointed out the jury’s award of $15,000 appeared to be pulled out of the air. The seemingly random amount simply illustrated the weakness of verdict precisely because Dr. Swanson marshalled no evidence of an actual injury to his reputation. As the dissent says, adequate compensation for proved reputational harm may be difficult to quantify in dollars and cents, and a jury’s award should be given the utmost respect. But an award rendered in the absence of evidence on a necessary element of the asserted legal claim cannot stand.
Dr. Swanson presented only guesses that the Yelp post must have harmed his reputation rather than direct or circumstantial evidence that it actually did so. Accordingly, we have done no more than our required duty in affirming the district court’s ruling granting Elysia Marcus’ motion for judgment as a matter of law.
From Marcus v. Swanson, decided today by the Kansas Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Gordon Atcheson, joined by Presiding Judge Stephen Hill:
In this case, we must apply defamation law crafted 40 years ago to a decidedly 21st century set of facts. A plastic surgeon [Swanson] asserted that a “review” a disgruntled former patient [Marcus] posted on an internet site falsely impugned his professional reputation. A jury sitting in Johnson County District Court agreed and entered a $15,000 verdict for the physician. The district court set aside the verdict because the physician, who continued to maintain a full schedule of patients, did not prove any actual harm to his reputation as a result of the post—a necessary component for a successful defamation claim under Kansas law.
Under the First Amendment, a state may allow prevailing plaintiffs to recover “presumed damages” even in the absence of specific proof of harm to reputation, especially when it comes to speech on matters of private concern. Generally speaking, this happens under the “libel per se” doctrine, which in most states allows plaintiffs to recover such presumed damages if the statements fall within some specific categories that are seen as especially harmful, including allegations of incompetence or misconduct in one’s profession. (Note that the parties in this case agreed that this speech was on a matter of private concern, though the defendant could have argued that public consumer complaints are on matters of public concern, as many courts have indeed held.)
But Kansas law has rejected this principle as a matter of state law, see Gobin v. Globe Publishing Co. (Kan. 1982), and the majority held that this was binding here:
Basically, Dr. Swanson attempts to craft a rule that would permit a plaintiff to prevail on a defamation claim in some circumstances without showing actual harm. Under his approach, a plaintiff would have a judicial forum to prove the falsity of the challenged statements when the publisher acted with an evil purpose and could recover nominal actual damages and, perhaps, punitive damages. Such a formulation of defamation law would benefit Dr. Swanson in this case. More broadly, the rule would offer a path for name-clearing vindication in some cases and, in that way, would be similar to libel per se.
Rather than relying on the message communicated, as does libel per se, Dr. Swanson’s rule would turn on the publisher’s pernicious intent in choosing to communicate a defamation whatever its content. Despite Dr. Swanson’s characterization otherwise, he has asked us to change Kansas defamation law, albeit in an intriguing way. Because common-law doctrine defines the scope of permissible defamation claims, we cannot simply cast aside what the Kansas Supreme Court has declared the law to be.
Dr. Swanson’s point on appeal also implicitly suggests libel per se may serve a significant remedial purpose in defamation law, especially in the age of the internet. Anyone with a computer and access to the internet can reach an extraordinarily large audience with stunning immediacy and a degree of permanency that outstrips other means of publication. Those tools offer a soapbox and megaphone that reach millions—not just passersby on the town square or recipients of leaflets handed out in front of the state capitol or even readers of a full-page advertisement in the print edition of The New York Times such as the one that prompted the Sullivan case. That ability to communicate carries with it an extraordinary power to promote what may be frivolous or profound or good or malevolent.
In laboratory conditions, the marketplace of ideas is supposed to be self-regulating in the sense the intrinsically sound will drive out the unsound. But the marketplace doesn’t necessarily function that way in the real world. Defamation law, in turn, provides a tailored remedy to persons besmirched in public forums, especially when simply putting out a counter-narrative may be an ineffective antidote for particularly corrosive falsehoods. That is, the marketplace sometimes works too slowly or not at all, and some statements about some people are so obviously wrongful, such as false representations demeaning them in their chosen occupations, that their very publication arguably should permit vindication in a judicial forum. But the law should not be so onerous as to stifle vigorous and even controversial debate on matters of public concern. Balancing those competing and undeniably valuable objectives typically falls to the courts in fashioning defamation law.
As this case illustrates, the internet has radically altered how the forces that drive the marketplace of ideas operate. Given the epochal change, some courts have closely examined whether and how libel per se may provide a needed check on those forces in certain circumstances. They have chosen to retain libel per se, at least in cases involving private parties and private matters…. [Other cases have rejected libel per se.] … We do not mean to offer some veiled suggestion Kansas defamation law should be revised and simply repeat our observations that things are quite different now than they were when Gobin was decided.
Regardless of those observations, we are bound to apply the common law as the Kansas Supreme Court has presently defined it. On that basis, we reject Dr. Swanson’s argument that the jury’s finding that Marcus acted maliciously in the traditional tort sense salvages the verdict in his favor without proof of any actual damage to his reputation.
Judge Sarah Warner dissented in part, concluding that “there was sufficient evidence presented at the trial to allow the defamation claim against Marcus to go to the jury”:
Marcus left a Yelp post, including a one-star rating and a lengthy narrative, on Dr. Swanson’s practitioner page and the page for his medical practice. The post stated that Dr. Swanson was a “monster” who was unlicensed and unprincipled and who had committed medical malpractice. The jury found Marcus’ post to be defamatory—the information in the post was false and exposed Dr. Swanson to public contempt or ridicule or deprived him of the benefits of public confidence and social acceptance. The jury also found the post to be willful and malicious—Marcus intended to injure Dr. Swanson and did so without any reasonable justification or excuse. Though Marcus cross-appealed, she has not challenged these findings. We thus accept them as true.
The only question that remains is whether there was evidence that Marcus’ Yelp post injured Dr. Swanson’s reputation. After being instructed on this element of a defamation claim, the jury found Dr. Swanson had proven reputational injury and awarded him $15,000 in damages. The district court and the majority of this panel disagree with the jurors’ assessment. But viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Dr. Swanson, as our standard of review requires, I trust the jury’s finding as one informed by the evidence, reasonable inferences, and common experience.
Dr. Swanson presented evidence at trial showing that Yelp is a review-aggregator platform. Yelp users leave reviews of businesses, along with a corresponding star-rating, with five stars being the highest rating and one star the lowest. The platform then highlights certain reviews as “recommended” commentary and deemphasizes other reviews that the platform does not recommend. Yelp also provides each business with a representative star-rating based on the users’ submissions.
For whatever reason, Yelp highlighted Marcus’ defamatory post as a “recommended” review. Neither Dr. Swanson nor Marcus provided any evidence about what criteria Yelp uses to determine whether a post will be recommended or not. But regardless of Yelp’s internal criteria, Marcus testified that she posted her statement on Yelp because she wanted other people to see it. And after Yelp highlighted her review as recommended, Marcus refused to remove the post at Dr. Swanson’s—and then his lawyer’s—request. A reasonable inference from this testimony is that Marcus created her post, and then insisted that it remain, because she wanted to influence other people’s views about Dr. Swanson and his medical practice.
Dr. Swanson testified that he was concerned enough by the post that he and his staff went through significant—though unsuccessful—efforts to remove it. This included “hundreds” of hours of his and his staff’s time.
One of Dr. Swanson’s patients testified that when she saw the Yelp post, she felt “concerned that it might have a negative effect on his practice” and talked with the doctor so “he knew it was out there.” … It is true, as the majority points out, that—despite Marcus’ post—this patient sought and received treatment from Dr. Swanson a second time. But her testimony regarding reputational harm did not focus on her decision to receive treatment; it concerned the post’s impact on Dr. Swanson’s overall Yelp presence….
Dr. Swanson also provided evidence about the effect of Marcus’ post on his Yelp star-rating. He testified that before Marcus’ post, his star-rating—essentially a snapshot of his aggregate business ranking—was 5 stars. But after Marcus’ 1-star post, his star-rating dropped to 3.5 stars. Dr. Swanson testified that without Marcus’ post, he would have a 5-star rating….
I find this evidence sufficient to demonstrate reputational injury. Marcus created her Yelp post intending for people to see and be influenced by it. She refused to remove the post when it was highlighted by the Yelp platform because she knew more people would see her post and be influenced by it. Dr. Swanson’s patient reached out to him because she was concerned about the post’s negative impact. This combination of evidence, without more, may have danced on the razor’s edge of speculation. But Marcus’ post also affected Dr. Swanson’s reputation in a real, measurable sense: It reduced Dr. Swanson’s Yelp star-rating from 5 to 3.5 stars. Though people might reasonably disagree about how all this evidence should be interpreted, it is sufficient—in my view—to support the jury’s finding that the post harmed Dr. Swanson’s reputation….
[T]he majority opinion notes the absence of evidence relating to the precise monetary impact of Marcus’ post on Dr. Swanson’s practice. But in doing so, the majority conflates reputational injury and economic loss. While Kansas law requires a person to show actual injury to prevail on a defamation claim, courts have never limited reputational injury to monetary losses—a reality the majority recognizes. In fact, Kansas law contemplates the opposite—that reputational injury can (and often does) include noneconomic harm [such as impairment of reputation and standing in the community, personal humiliation, and mental anguish and suffering] ….
There is no question that noneconomic injuries can be difficult to quantify, regardless of the type of claim or issues raised. But courts routinely entrust juries with this task, whether it be in assessing pain and suffering in personal-injury cases, reputational injury in defamation suits, or other noneconomic injuries such as emotional distress. And Marcus does not dispute the suitability of the jury’s $15,000 damage award—a factual assessment to which appellate courts show great deference. She argues that Dr. Swanson’s defamation claim fails as a matter of law, asserting there is no evidence to support the jury’s finding that Marcus’ Yelp post injured Dr. Swanson’s reputation….
Here’s the majority’s response to Judge Warner’s argument:
[The dissent’s] discussion does no more than elaborate on Dr. Swanson’s argument that it “stands to reason” Elysia Marcus’ Yelp post must have diminished his professional reputation. The argument trades on speculation and assumption—not facts. The trial record and the dissent are bereft of colorable direct or circumstantial evidence supporting a diminution of reputation. The dissent, however, does backhandedly make a case for why presumed damages might reflect good policy in cases similar to this, allowing individuals falsely demeaned in their trade or profession to clear their names in district court proceedings without having to prove actual reputational harm. The dissent really rests on a call for restoring libel per se in at least some circumstances….
For all the trial record shows, visitors to the Yelp page may have routinely dismissed the post as a hysterical rant unworthy of credence or the work of a gallivanting internet troll randomly lobbing fake bombshells for his or her misguided amusement. And those skeptical visitors likewise would have discounted Dr. Swanson’s aggregate rating of 3.5 stars as unrealistically low as a result of the unfounded negative review. Ultimately, the notion that somebody somewhere must have been adversely disposed toward Dr. Swanson because of the post cannot pass for evidence of actual reputational harm. If that were the law in Kansas, widespread publication of a falsehood alone would be sufficient without evidence of any diminution of reputation….
A loss of business (and the resulting economic harm) could be circumstantial proof of a reputational injury if the downturned came on the heels of the publication of a defamatory statement, particularly if the statement attacked the subject’s professional abilities. Here, Dr. Swanson offered no evidence of the kind and apparently maintained a full practice notwithstanding Elysia Marcus’ post.
We also pointed out that Kansas cases recognize other forms of circumstantial evidence, such as the physician who asserted he stopped receiving inquiries from recruiters inviting him to consider positions heading departments at major hospitals and was no longer asked to write or peer review articles for professional journals. Those lost career opportunities would suggest a loss of professional standing or reputation without necessarily entailing any direct economic harm. Here, again, Dr. Swanson offered no comparable evidence….
Against that backdrop and lack of evidence, we pointed out the jury’s award of $15,000 appeared to be pulled out of the air. The seemingly random amount simply illustrated the weakness of verdict precisely because Dr. Swanson marshalled no evidence of an actual injury to his reputation. As the dissent says, adequate compensation for proved reputational harm may be difficult to quantify in dollars and cents, and a jury’s award should be given the utmost respect. But an award rendered in the absence of evidence on a necessary element of the asserted legal claim cannot stand.
Dr. Swanson presented only guesses that the Yelp post must have harmed his reputation rather than direct or circumstantial evidence that it actually did so. Accordingly, we have done no more than our required duty in affirming the district court’s ruling granting Elysia Marcus’ motion for judgment as a matter of law.
