Wedge: Teaching race and gender

Americans agree that issues of race and gender divide us.

Democrats want schools to teach about them. 

Republicans don't.

College classmate Jeffrey Laurenti drew my attention to a Monmouth University opinion poll. Laurenti is a political scientist, and a former senior analyst with a boutique foreign policy think tank. He lives in New Jersey, where he has been active in Democratic politics. He served as an Obama elector in the 2012 election. 

Laurenti

Guest Post by Jeffrey Laurenti

Opinion research published today helps illuminate the targets on which political aspirants on the right like Ron DeSantis, and the media organs of the right like Fox, are homing in.

Data compiled by the Monmouth Poll show that while teaching on racial aspects of history is uncomfortable mainly for the large subset of whites who identify as Republican, a significant majority of the American public at large acknowledge that racial gaps need to be more forthrightly addressed -- including blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, and the large subset of whites who identify as Democrats. In focusing on issues with assertedly ethno-racial reverberations like immigration and violent crime, the right is essentially appealing to its existing base, not expanding it.

The gold mine for the right, however, seems to be on issues touching on what the pollster delicately calls "gender identity," where significant majorities of blacks, Asians, and Hispanics profess discomfort with dealing directly with debates on such concerns in classrooms. The only demographic flagged in this survey that favors broadening, rather than restricting, teaching about gender identity issues in schools is... white Democrats. No wonder the hysteria about transgender that's sweeping Republican-controlled legislatures.

Of course, to the extent that the right can exploit issues that may pit black interests against those of Asian and Hispanic voters, they may be able to move the needle on racial "wokeness," but that's far less cost-free an area on which to focus than the transgender concerns.

                                                        ----

Here is a summary of the poll results, with details available by going to the link for the full details:

Widespread agreement that race is central to our politics

And then the sharp partisan divide over whether schools should address sensitive issues.

This is another iteration of widespread decline in trust in public institutions. Republicans don't trust public schools. Republican voters suspect American history is taught to the disadvantage of Whites and that matters of gender as taught and implemented by schools are wrong and dangerous. There are "your facts" and "alternative facts." Your story and my story. Overwhelming majorities of White Republican voters don't trust schools to tell the story of race and gender their way, so they don't want them taught.

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Something actionable to do

Send Chris Christie $5.

Get him on the debate stage.

Chris Christie isn't selling what a majority of GOP primary voters want to hear. Not yet. Too many of them are still in love with Trump.  

That might change. Christie might change them.

https://chrischristie.com/

In some ways Chris Christie and Trump are alike. Both are Republicans. As president, both would happily sign legislation that a Republican House and Senate would send for signature. Both want lower taxes for top earners. Both want more Federalist-type judges on the Supreme Court. 

Stylistically, both are known for having big, booming assertive personalities. People formerly thought that Christie was the big bully in politics, but Trump took over that designation. Both Trump and Christie have political courage to say bold, maybe-unpopular things. They aren't weathervanes or hedgers. That distinguishes Christie from all the other Republican aspirants to displace Trump. They hedge. They partly defend Trump or carefully tip-toe around Trump. (Did he win in 2020?  Well, a lot of people think so, and those people are sincere, and there are reasons to be concerned about election security, but we are against violent invasion of the Capitol. . . .) 

Chris Christie is entirely different. He is saying aloud what 60% of Americans think, and something that -- maybe -- some portion of Republicans are ready to hear, that Donald Trump is dangerous and should not be president. That Trump is morally wrong. That he does criminal things, proudly. That he is unworthy of being our leader -- even if he does fight people we don't like and says some things we like to hear.

Christie positions himself as the frank truth-teller.  I don't expect many Democrats to vote for him in a general election. He is a Republican who generally supports the Republican suite of policies. But he represents a version of a post-Trump Republican party, a GOP that cleansed itself of Trump.

The actionable thing people can do is send him a token campaign contribution. To be on the GOP presidential debate stage a candidate must have at a minimum of 40,000 unique donors to their campaign, with at least 200 unique donors per state or territory, in 20 states and territories. They must also poll at least 1% in some national polls recognized as legitimate by the RNC. Christie will get the poll results. He needs the contributions.

In my own view, the great tragedy for American democracy is not Trump. It is that Trump has been tolerated by the GOP electorate. Trump is a predictable pathogen. The Constitution-writers anticipated Trump. In a federal system the Constitutional system of checks and balances in a federal system should have created antibodies to isolate and discard the pathogen. Ambition among Republicans, combined with civic virtue, should have blocked Trump. It didn't. There were multiple opportunities for ambitious GOP leaders to have displaced Trump: the 2016 nomination, the Access Hollywood tape, the 2020 election, January 6, the criminal indictments. But GOP leaders followed opinion. They didn't lead and shape it. The republican principle of people electing wiser leaders failed.

Chris Christie is a reform agent for the GOP.  

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Guest Post: Tax the Rich.

Tax the Rich. Tax them more.

Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me
'Cause I'm the taxman
Yeah, I'm the taxman
Should five percent appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all.

"Taxman" George Harrison of The Beatles, 1968

The USA has a progressive income tax. High income people pay a higher percentage of their income than do lower income people. It redistributes wealth. Guest Post author Michael Wallace says it should be more progressive and redistribute more wealth.

Mitt Romney famously said 47% of Americans were "takers." He was referring to the reality that almost half of Americans essentially pay zero federal income tax. They pay sales taxes, Social Security taxes, utility taxes, fees, tolls, and more, but not much in federal income tax. Only 3% of federal income taxes paid are paid by the bottom half of Americans.

Michael Wallace's Guest Post proposes that the current tax rates become more progressive, with incomes drawn from the wealthiest and given to the poorest. Marginal tax rates used to be much higher than now. 

Postwar America was a time of relative equality between rich and poor. There was an ethic of "we are all in this together" coming out of the war experience, when the entire country was pressed into service. The lives of wealthy people depended on the military service of young men and women in uniform and on factory floors. An enlisted man in Europe, North Africa, or on a ship in the Pacific wasn't a "taker."  By 1980 Ronald Reagan put voice to the new ethic: The government is the problem and income redistribution is theft from hard-working Americans.

Michael Wallace is a college classmate. After college Wallace joined the Peace Corps and then returned to obtain a Ph.D. from the JFK School of Government. He retired in 2018 and enjoys daily walks with his dog Layla.

Michael and Layla have visited my farm and vineyard twice. Layla runs around, sniffing for ground squirrel scent, and digs holes. 

Guest Post by Michael Wallace 

My previous post (June 24) was about the persistent inequality of income in the United States and redressing this problem by redistributing income after it is acquired. That post recommended the amounts of income that could be redistributed with great absolute benefit to the poorest 40% (the two lowest quintiles) of the population and little relative cost to the richest 40% (the two upper quintiles). That post recommended what to do, not how to do it.

 

The “how” is easy.  We have an income tax system, and every year some people receive refunds from that system, often because they have paid more tax than they owe.  Redistributing income can become one of the objectives of the income tax system, in addition to the goal of providing the money that funds government activities.  Government services funded by the income tax would simply expand to include a more equitable distribution of income.

 

However, redistribution should not be an annual activity, taking place only once a year.  People who receive large lumpsum payments are likely to spend them quickly and come up short of funds for other needs soon thereafter.  It would be much better to redistribute this money each month, like a paycheck or Social Security payment.  This additional redistribution could simply be an expansion of the current Social Security system.

 

On the contribution side, the Internal Revenue Service already has a quarterly tax payment mechanism that could be expanded to include these payments into the redistribution system. The table below shows 2021 mean US annual incomes by quintile, revised incomes after redistribution, and the total and monthly redistribution amounts.

 

Household Annual Income Distribution
Quintile	Mean	Revised	Redistribution
	A	B	Total (B-A)	Monthly
Lowest quintile	$14,859	$41,795	+$26,936	+$2,245
Second quintile	$41,025	$52,571	+$11,546	+$962
Middle quintile	$70,879	$70,879	$0	$0
Fourth quintile	$115,462	$103,916	-$11,546	-$962
Top quintile	$269,356	$242,420	-$26,936	-$2,245

Tax Policy Center

The numbers in the table above show the mean values for the households in each quintile.  In practice, household values would fall on a smooth upward-sloping curve so the income for a household at the top of one quintile would be little different from the income for a household at the bottom of the next quintile above.

 

I think this redistribution would make us a better and happier society.

 

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Show off.

Trump: "Isn't it amazing?

Trump: "This thing just came up. This was him. [General Mark Milley] This was the Defense Department and him." 

Woman:  "Wow."

Trump: "Isn't that incredible?"

Trump: "It's so cool."

It helps to listen to the tape, not just read a transcript. It is two minutes long.

Click here

If for some reason that link doesn't work for you, here is a link to a CBS site with the audio.

Click here

The tape helps explain Trump's motive. What in the world was Trump thinking when he collected documents to take home, hide from the National  Archives, lie about, get lawyers to lie about? In an earlier blog post I suggested we did not need to overthink this. He collected souvenirs. Once things were "his," he didn't want to let go. It is a human emotion. It explains two-car garages with no room to park a car. You can never tell when something might come in handy. 

This recording is of informal conversation around a table, taped because he is meeting with biographers. It is casual and unguarded. Trump appears to be his genuine, unfiltered self. He is showing off, waving a document he says shows that war plans with Iran were the initiative of the Defense Department, not him. He says it vindicates him of any claim that invading Iran was his idea. (See? The stuff he kept came in handy.)

One also hears the pride of possession and one-upmanship. I am reminded of a boy with a new bike. He has something special. It is secret, and his. I can show it to you, so you can see I have it and wish you could see it, but you can't. It is so juvenile. So show-off. 

The woman's "Wow" must have been music to Trump's ears. 

I suspect Democrats think this is a knockout blow to Trump. It should be. I consider the audio tape devastating to Trump. He establishes the elements of a serious felony. Trump's defense is to ignore the content of the tape. He asserts he is totally innocent and that it vindicates him. Look at Anthony Weiner, he says. Trump is giving Republicans a reason to hear what they want to hear. He isn't documenting criminality. He is documenting that he is a change-agent unconcerned about constraints, willing to break eggs to make omelettes, and appoint Federalist Society judges.  He doesn't care about legal nitpicks.  A great many voters hear and like that. 

The law overlaps with the election season. The relevant jury will be the voters even if he is tried and found guilty. A guilty verdict will be somewhere in appeal. Trump will be out campaigning, saying he is the guy picked on for being an innocent American. The real jury is the American people. Who would they rather have as president, Trump or Biden? The choice is between the self-confident promoter, the swashbuckling Republican shake-things-up agent of change, or the old normal guy who will keep the status quo going. Biden talks about the "rule of law" as if it is a good thing.

I am not at all sure people won't take another chance on crazy, so long as it is "strong." The 2024 election will be a "change" election. I hear the voice of a needy child in that tape; Trump is the opposite of "strong." But others hear a man who is unrestrained by laws, facts, restraints, and norms. They want change, and are indiscriminate about how they get it.  Again, the poll I described two days ago:

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Reparations for the descendents of slaves.

     "Yahweh, Yahweh, a God compassionate and gracious. . . forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet he won't declare as innocent the guilty, and he will bring the iniquities of the fathers upon the children and grandchildren, to the third and fourth generation."

                             Exodus, 34 

"Reparations" is a red-flag word. 

I can think of no word more politically toxic for Democrats than the word "reparations." It is worse, even, than "defund the police." Most White Americans who would freely admit that slavery was cruel and unjust, as was Jim Crow, simply do not want to hear that this history is any of their responsibility. That was then. This is now. 

A majority of White Americans adopt a value of self-reliance and individual responsibility when thinking about whether they owe a generational debt to the victims of prejudice. Even if everyone doesn't start off life with equal advantages, the cure of  race-based advantages going to other people seems so unfair, so un-American, so morally wrong when it is applied against oneself and one's children and grandchildren. Slavery and Jim Crow aren't my fault. Why punish me! To be politically viable, people who want policies that help equalize opportunity cannot call it "reparations," nor can it be overtly discriminatory based on race.

Constance Hilliard posits a way to get a job done that might avoid setting off land mines of backlash. She is a college classmate. She is a student of history and genetics, particularly as they relate to Americans of African heritage, where she pioneered a sub-field of ancestral genomics. She earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in African history and Semitic historiography. She is a professor of evolutionary African history at the University of North Texas. 

Hilliard

Guest Post by Constance Hilliard

Driven by timidity or perhaps just cowardice, I had, as an African-American professor, tip-toed around the controversy surrounding slavery reparations for years.  But in April of 2022, my alma mater announced that it was setting up a $100 million endowment to help close the educational and socio-economic gaps created by slavery by offering financial support to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).  As a Harvard University alumna, whose education had benefitted from affirmative action, I could no longer hide. And yet, what kept me awake at night was bearing witness to our fragile democracy’s accelerating slide into neo-fascism. Maybe now wasn’t the time for such gestures of compensatory justice. But a quiet bout of soul-searching led me to a deeper lode of truth.   

 

Those of us who treasure the promise of our democracy ache as we must witness the GOP’s defense of Donald Trump for sexual abuse, the mishandling of classified documents and more criminal indictments to come. His supporters are  incapable of being shamed by electoral fraud, financial corruption, racism, and sexism. So what alternatives do we have other than begging and pleading with the ever present reservoir of disengaged voters  “to do the right thing”? Let’s consider for a moment the possibility that electoral politics, albeit essential, may not be the only path forward.  

 

A growing but not yet clearly-defined movement among universities in the United States has emerged to discuss ways of compensating the descendants of slaves. Not surprisingly such efforts are being met with conservative push-back. But what if we as a society re-envisioned the missions of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs)? Perhaps now is the time to see them for what they really are, i.e., cultural juggernauts, anchored to the heart space of the old Confederacy. However important their educational value, the vibrant cultural exposure for a growing generation of culturally-isolated young Americans could prove transformational.  HBCUs’ present-day emphasis on maintaining interracial campuses and the fact that they remain an institutional presence below the Mason-Dixon line could contribute to re-framing the ethos of the American South. That is, these schools  represent a kinetic force capable of driving a wedge through the soul of American authoritarianism. They do so wielding the soft but vibrant touch of multi-culturalism. And yet at the present time, many of these schools are dying, a fact that was dramatically noted in a 2015 article in Forbes Magazine.

 

I have taught African and African-American History at the University of North Texas (a non-HBCU) for the past thirty years. That experience has honed my awareness of how young Texans and others are drawn to multicultural educational experiences if given the opportunity.  Funds made available to HBCUs through the slavery reparations movement would allow them to re-seize their historical mission, but on a more expansive platform.  Students in both HBCUs and community colleges finance their educations through student loans. However young people who come from low-income rather than middle-class families, often give up on higher education, fearing their future ability to repay college loans. HBCUs, bolstered by reparations funding would be able to fill this gaping hole in our higher education system. That is, they could offer needs-based scholarships to academically-deserving, but economically disadvantaged students of all races.  This is the America that both the Reverend Martin Luther King and Malcolm X sacrificed their lives to attain. It is one in which the restorative justice of slave reparations would be used to heal our nation’s old, suppurating wounds rather than inflame them.

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Easy Sunday. Gentleman Farmer

Dirt Farmer:

     "A farmer who works on the soil, distinguished from one who operates a farm with hired hands or tenants."

Gentleman Farmer:

     "A landowner who has a farm as part of his estate and who farms mainly for pleasure rather than for profit or sustenance."

I consider myself a proud dirt farmer.

For the first time ever, I hired people. We planted 2,900 plants Friday and another 4,000 plants yesterday.  I didn't just watch or supervise. I had dug holes, then went back to dig them deeper to accommodate the long stem and roots. All but about four inches of it goes in the ground.  

I worked long days. I suppose I did it for "pleasure" but it was hard work. The grape vineyard might eventually be profitable. The farm's pumice soil is unique. It creates extraordinarily fine particles. The grape roots will extract rich flavor notes. In five years we will know if those flavors are considered superior in the markets for Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Malbec wines. 

Photos are by veteran photojournalist Tam Moore, and by my 15-year-old nephew, Liam Flenniken, who came down from Portland to help me plant grapes. 

Photo: Liam Flenniken

Liam Flenniken is an incoming sophomore at Lincoln High School in Portland. He is able-bodied, and has a great attitude and work ethic.

My neighbor, Collin Nelson, who is also installing a vineyard, is helping. 

Photo: Tam Moore

Grape with identifying clone type and lot number.

(Moore)

Grape vines come in bundles of 25, labeled by their variety, specific clone, and row from which it was taken at the plant nursery. A bin holds about 2000 plants. Neighbor Steve Glass and daughter Kara kept track of which plant-lots went into which rows of my field.

(Moore)

(Moore)

A person places a plant in the empty holes a few minutes ahead of the planters.

 (Moore)

Each plant is placed by hand directly under a drip.

(Moore)

Photo below shows crew planting.  In the background is the house built by my grandparents a hundred years ago this year. Originally it was about 480 square feet for my two grandparents plus their five children. The house was a "kit house" and came on a truck from Montgomery Wards. 

(Moore)

I appreciate the Guest Posts I have been able to publish during this busy period of long days getting the vineyard planted. We get by with a little help from our friends.

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"The natives are getting restless."

America has a problem. Income inequality.

The status quo is unstable and may be unsustainable. 

A great many Americans think the system is rigged against them. They see wealth trickling up, not down. The rich get richer, the educated have their licenses and certifications that protect their jobs, while working people fall behind and struggle to afford housing and other essentials. The frustration fuels populist discontent.  Populism on the right targets "takers" -- the lazy, the incompetent, the addicted, the system gamers, the "welfare queens" --  who are a drag on hard working people like themselves. Some resent affirmative-action. Some blame immigrants who bring down wages because they work too hard for too little. Some blame competition from Mexico or China. Populism on both right and left points at economic elites -- corporations, and the very wealthy, with their lobbyists, special interest PACs, and ability to pull the strings of democratic government.

Ipsos posted a poll that included these results:

This poll isn't an outlier. People who are doing OK in the current environment and are comfortable with the status quo should not assume we will muddle through this bad patch in our democracy. The final question asked above demonstrates that a great many people have lost patience with democracy. We have all seen the familiar movie tropes. A vulnerable group hears drums in the distance: "The natives," an actor warns, "are getting restless." Then all hell breaks loose. 

Michael Wallace is a college classmate. He offers a solution to the problem of income inequality. After college Wallace joined the Peace Corps and then returned to obtain a Ph.D. from the JFK School of Government. He retired in 2018 and enjoys daily walks with his dog Layla. 

Guest Post by Michael Wallace

One of my ongoing concerns is the persistent inequality of income and wealth in the United States (and the world).  This inequality has certainly seen its ups and downs, but in the last 30 years it has increased, so that from an economic perspective, we are a more unequal society now than we were in 1990.  Some people may not think this is a serious problem, but I do.  I think that more egalitarian societies are happier societies.  

 

There are a variety of ways to address this problem, from equalizing the acquisition of income in the first place to equalizing the retention of this income after it is acquired.  This post addresses the redistribution of income after it is acquired.

 

To simplify the exercise, I consider a simple society composed of five quintiles of income.  The current (2021) distribution of income by quintile in the United States is shown in the left side of the table below:

Tax Policy Center

To redistribute income, I would take 10% of the income of the top quintile and give it to the bottom quintile.  I would take 10% of the income of the second highest quintile and give it to the second lowest quintile.  The ranking of the quintiles would not change, so individual personal positions would stay the same in the overall society.  As only 10% of anyone’s income has been taken and redistributed, absolute losses would be relatively small.

 

However, the absolute incomes of the bottom quintile of people would increase by 181%--their incomes would nearly triple.  The absolute incomes of the second lowest quintile would increase by 28%--more than a quarter.  The bottom two quintiles would be much happier, and the top two quintiles would hardly be disadvantaged.

 

I think this would be a better and happier society.

 

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Saudi golf: Sand dunes to sand traps.

Saudi Arabia has used its oil and its money to help -- and torment -- the U.S.

Saudi Arabia is the world's "swing producer" of oil. They have oil to sell, but don't need to sell all they can produce. By raising or lowering production they manage the quantity of oil and therefore its price.

A month ago they were in the news when they announced they will cut production beginning in July. The price of oil went up. Gasoline prices went up. That affects inflation and inflation consciousness. They just made things harder for Biden. Their $2 billion investment in Jared Kushner's brand new hedge fund was a goodwill gesture with Trump. Last week the PGA announced a planned merger with LIV, the new Saudi professional golf association. Some of the tournaments are at Trump properties.

Jack Mullen lives in Washington, D.C. He closely follows both politics and sports and he reads history. The news of the PGA/LIV merger combined all these interests.

Jack Mullen and Jennifer Angelo

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

The Arabian Peninsula ended the 19th Century with feuding Bedouin tribes fighting each other. Outside the peninsula, no one cared. European countries, saved by the 1815 Congress of Vienna, ended the 19th Century with their empires crumbling, destined for a tumultuous 20th century. Meanwhile, the U.S. entered the new century extending its Manifest Destiny’s reach by plucking pieces of the weak Spanish Empire from the Caribbean to the Philippines. 

Abd al-Azziz al Saud, with his band of 30 brothers, after collaborating with various rivals, declared victory in 1902. Among the previous rivals that merged with Emir al-Azziz, the most notable was a Bedouin faction that consisted of Wahhabi Islamic purists, the Ikhwans. Abd al-Azziz steadily increased his power to the point that, in 1932, he declared himself King of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A year later, in 1933, oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia. Amid the Depression and the New Deal, Roosevelt and his Administration found time to establish diplomatic relations with them.

Abd al Azziz de Saud quickly requested that U.S. petroleum companies  help develop Saudi oil resources. Much to the displeasure to the House of Saud’s Wahhabi faction, the Saudi government and Standard Oil of California established ARAMCO, the Arab American Oil Company.

Abd al-Azziz de Saud and Roosevelt formed a long-distance mutual admiration society. FDR left Yalta Conference February 11, 1945, and made a bee-line to the America’s wartime embassy, the U.S.S. Quincy, docked in the Suez Canal. FDR met with the aging Saudi monarch on the Quincy’s top deck. In deference the King’s strong Islamic beliefs, FDR wisely ditched his cigarettes and cigarette holder on the Quincy’s elevator. The two old men formed a secret alliance. The U.S. needed Saudi oil for WWII. The Saudis wanted protection from neighboring enemies. In exchange for Saudi oil, the U.S. would provide the Saudis with military assistance.

Saudi oil helped the Allied war effort, as well as the U.S. auto industry in the booming post-war years. Military bases in Saudi Arabia benefited House of Saud greatly, but at a long-term cost to the U.S. As the world dependence in oil grew, so did the entanglement of Saudi and American oil families, including a Texas oil family, the Bushes. By the end of the 20th century, the Saudis and the Bush families were large contributors to the Carlyle Investment Group. Ex-President George Herbert Walker Bush was on the Carlyle Board of Directors from 1998-2003, joining just two years after his Presidency.

As President, George HW Bush thought he was saving Saudi oil fields when the U.S. military quickly removed the invading Iraqi army from Kuwait. Maybe he did save Saudi oil fields, although Saddam claims he received the tacit U.S. approval from Ambassador April Glaspie to invade and stop at Kuwait. The American invasion of Kuwait did not sit well with the Wahhabis, nor with the most prominent Wahhabi, the Saudi, Osama bin Laden.

Then, the 9/11 attacks. We know 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi nationals.

A group of hawkish conservatives including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld, penned a letter in 1998 to President Clinton, urging him to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from Iraq. Clinton rejected the idea. George W. Bush became President in 2001. His Vice President and the Secretaries of Defense and State liked the idea of removing Saddam Hussein’s regime from Iraq. The opportunity to go after Saddam gained traction soon after 9/11. Using the buzzword "terrorist," which the perpetrators of 9/11 most assuredly were, the administration made the case that there was no greater terrorist on the world stage than Saddam Hussein, a madman in possession of weapons of mass destruction. The  Neocons in the Bush Administration pulled a bait and switch, changing the focus from the Saudi terrorists to Saddam Hussein, who, as we know, did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

In an attempt to offset Saudi Arabia’s dismal human rights record, the Saudi Government set up a successful Public Investment Fund (PIF) in 1971. Quietly, PIF money spread around the world. Uber received $3.2 billion PIF funds.

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund found a warm welcome in the sporting world, especially soccer. Golf is another story. Saudi Arabia’s newly established golf tour, LIV, challenged the PGA’s anti-trust exemption by signing 11 PGA golfers to expensive contracts. Phil Mickelson’s $200 million signing bonus sent shock waves through the golf world. Victims of 9/11 objected to Saudi money being tossed at wealthy golfers. PGA commissioner Jay Monahan, invoking memories of 9/11, said the PGA would never deal with the new Saudi league.

Golf is a conservative sport with a hallowed tradition. LIV decided to shake up golf. LIV tournaments are set up to attract a different, younger crowd. Team-play, employed by colleges and high schools, is a big part of LIV tournaments, as is loud music. Loud music seems popular at football and basketball games, why not golf?

After a year of LIV golf, Monahan stunned the golf world by meeting secretly with Saudi’s PIF head, Yassir Al-Rumayann, in Vienna. Monahan came out of that meeting and announced of a PGA-LIV merger.

The PGA’s commercial and business rights will now be owned by a new for-profit entity owned by LIV (PGA is a non-profit organization). Mickelson and other LIV players who had challenged the PGA’s anti-trust exemption, dropped their lawsuits. They also cropped suits against LIV for violating PGA players’ contracts. The PGA had been losing money. The Saudis knew this. The cost of all the lawsuits put Monahan in a corner. He cried uncle. The Saudis now play a prominent part in pro golf. Golf fans can now take Uber to PGA matches, thanks to the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Victims of 9/11 are stunned. Monahan prepared himself for being a called a hypocrite. Two different Senate Committees, including Ron Wyden’s Finance Committee, are investigating the merger. So is the U.S. Department of Justice. Monahan has ended up hospitalized with some undisclosed illness.

Who knew what placid, old golf could do to Saudi-U.S. relations!

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