Thursday, April 30, 2009

PGA penalizes Tiger Woods


In the interest of leveling the playing field of golf and to assist other players to win more tournaments, trophies, prize money and lucrative sponsorships and endorsements, the PGA announced today its new Arbitrary Golf Fairness Plan, in which Tiger Woods will be assessed with a 5 stroke penalty on all future PGA sponsored events.

The five stroke penalty assessed to Mr. Woods was determined by a review of his past performances in tournaments over the last five years in which he won by 5.2 strokes relative to the average of the top ten finishing players of each tournament.

This measure was the result of extensive lobbying of the PGA by other lesser players as well as the major providers of endorsements who found that there weren’t enough good players to go around and for whom the good players, like Tiger Woods, were becoming far too expensive to secure for product endorsements.

The measure was brought into effect by Jim Flaherty, formerly the Finance Minister of Canada, and a special advisor to the PGA.

In announcing this new program, Mr. Flaherty justified it by stating:

“You have to either leave it alone or fix it,” Mr. Flaherty shrugged Wednesday. “We were going to see too many players in the country not win tournaments. That's a clear and present danger to fairness in the PGA. I thought we had to act arbitrarily and capriciously."

3 comments:

Dr Mike said...

Leveling the playing field always results in mediocrity in a country as you bring the best down to level of the worst.

Rewarding those who do well is the not the "New" Conservative way as poorly run outfits like BCE & Manulife were given the trust tax to bring the likes of Yellow Pages down to their level.

What is the incentive to do well when all that counts is that you have your hand in the pocket of the Finance Minister.

Dr Mike

Fillibluster said...

This is where McCallum has it wrong. He claims that “tax leakage” is not the issue, but rather thinks "leveling the playing field" is the issue.

That makes no sense, since what parameter will be used to determine "level" if not the taxes that are collected by Ottawa? If the parameter used to determine "level" is some parameter other than one that directly affects the government, such as alleged tax leakage, then what possible reason would the government have for getting involved in a "dispute" between the owners of a business, and the paid managers who are hired to run the business (CEOs and Directors), which isexactly how this trust tax came into being, as follows:

Globe, November 2, 2006: “High-profile directors and CEOs, meanwhile, had approached Mr. Flaherty personally to express their concerns: Many felt they were being pressed into trusts because of their duty to maximize shareholder value, despite their misgivings about the structure. Paul Desmarais Jr., the well-connected chairman of Power Corp. of Canada, even railed against trusts in a conversation with Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a trip to Mexico.”

If the market assigns a higher value to a business as a trust versus as a corporation for reasons that are solely related to the governance model of that business as a dsicipline trust as opposed to a carefree corporation, then that's a good thing. And if a business as an income trust raises as much tax revenue as that business as a corporation., then what possible concern or justification is there for the government to intervene? Doing so would simply be arbitrary and capricious.....and fundamentally wrong

Speaking of wrong, that's why McCallum is wrong to think these two concepts are disjointed..."leveling the playing field" and "tax leakage". They are completely inter-related.

This is why the falsehood and bogus conspiracy theory of "Tax leakage" needs to be exposed by the LIBERALS for the blatant FRAUD that it is.

Meanwhile we don't need the paid managers going to Ottawa to sabotage their owners, as was reported in the Globe.

Talk about arbitrary action by the Harper government and underhanded moves by the paid managers! They all need to be fired!

Just be careful who you hire in their place?

Brent Fullard

Anonymous said...

Flaherty also claimed that, with Woods being an American, he would not be paying his fair share in taxes to the Canadian Govt. Therefore, Flaherty has imposed a 31% surcharge on Wood's future winnings citing "tax leakage". Flaherty said he had to act swiftly and decisively as the 2009 PGA season was almost half over.
It is reported, but not by the Canadian media, that Corporate sponsors of the PGA tournaments (Manulife & TD America) had also urged Flaherty to act quickly to stem the "tax leakage" problem and to "level the playing field".

Woods said that Flaherty's authoritarian action was something only a "third world country" would do .
Woods also added, "The conservative morons in Canada are GREEDIER THAN WALL STREET!

Randy