No Extended Paid Leave For Workers - Unless They Have Kids Out Of School - Is Not only Wrongheaded But Immoral

Two aspects of the current tumult that drive  both of us to a near frenzy:  i) Young Turks who think they can just sashay all over hell's half acre because they believe they are invulnerable to the COVID-19 (and so spread it to the rest of us) and ii) Austerity fetishists who view with disgust any attempt to deliver money to the workers who desperately need it now with this nationwide shutdown of schools, restaurants, theaters, small businesses etc.  And have the absolute nerve and chutzpah to proffer palliative "solutions" that don't do diddly or squat.

Meanwhile we read in today's WSJ ('House Cuts Back Paid Leave Plan', p. B3), the original House bill (HR 6201:   'Families First Coronavirus Response Act')   has taken another austerity -driven hit.  Now, instead of ALL lower paid workers getting up to 10 weeks of paid leave, only workers who have children whose schools are shut will be able to benefit. Thus:

"Workers who had been in quarantine or caring for a family member affected by the virus wouldn't be eligible for the additional ten weeks of leave."

Given the shutdown to quell the virus is likely to last at least for part of the summer, this is nothing short of barbaric. Or to quote Janice:  "This is an atrocity perpetrated by vermin whose DNA contains only cruelty!"  I totally concur.      Why?  Because in the original bill, which at least had large elements of human decency (before the corporate asslicking Reeps got to it) there was a provision for the added 10 weeks of paid leave but at two -thirds pay. In addition, that added additional paid leave covered "health care providers and emergency responders"  but who "are no longer guaranteed additional 10 weeks of paid leave."

Why the hell not? They are the ones putting their lives on the line for all of us now!  They are the ones tending directly to patients and who have to worry about carrying back the infection into their own homes! Because of Trump and his merry band of buffoons those front line medical practitioners - doctors, nurses, PAs, are already having to improvise, i.e. reusing surgical masks (not the N-95 proper masks needed) and without other protective clothing.  As Dr. Tara Narula put it this morning on CBS: "Our medical providers now feel like fire fighters who are having to charge into a burning building with only a bikini and pail of water!"

  What the hell is wrong with this picture?   So if any of these front line workers go down - sick with the virus - they are supposed to possibly go without even 2/3 compensation for ten weeks or  more?  Well, thanks to the deplorable party of austerity- anti-spending apes holding the majority in the Senate (53- 47) and whose votes are needed to get any aid package passed. And now proud to be balking with the excuse they are "defending business"  (Though they are quite happy to include a $50 billion bailout for the airlines. )  As blogger Stephen Pizzo put it:

"Maybe most galling are the airlines. They're looking for something in the order of a $50 billion shot in the arm from Uncle Sam. And Dopey Don is fully onboard:"

Well, there you have it.  And what sort of solutions do these austerity assholes propose for the Burger King, Mickey D, Target or other workers forced to  "shelter in place."  Well, a LOAN!  (WSJ, p. A17, 'How to Treat the Financial Symptoms of COVID-19') .  The contributor, John Cochrane, writes:

"Loans are better than gifts. Rather than give each of us $1,000, allow us to borrow a fraction of last year's income from the Internal Revenue Service  and repay it when we file our taxes."

So, ok, let's work it out for this ignorant austerity asswit: A BK worker is already stretched thin with bills out the wazoo and needs  $10,000 to make it through an additional 10 weeks of shutdown.  So he has to go cap in hand to the IRS to beg for a $10,000 loan to pay back when he has to file taxes in 2021?  When he already will likely be in hock for back rent, utilities, etc.  What exactly is this asswipe smoking?  Must be some powerful dope to turn him into such a clueless dope.  But this kind of thinking pervades the reactionary Wall Street Journal op-ed pages. For example, in today's illustrious editorial ('The Fiscal Stimulus Panic', p. A16) we read:

"The checks no doubt will be popular....but they won't come cheap, running at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars for the first round.  What happens if the pandemic lasts into the summer?  The clamor will be for another round and then another."

Well, uh yeah! DUH! Because people ordered to stay shut in, no work, no paychecks coming in, will still need some moola to buy food, pay off utility bills etc. How hard is this to get into your noggins?  As multiple sane economists  (e.g. Paul Krugman)have noted, in order to defeat this virus the economy will have to tank.  Like a real world version of Heisenberg's Indeterminacy principle (where one cannot obtain both position and energy of a particle to the same accuracy) it simply will not be realistic to survive this COVID-19 pandemic with minimal deaths AND preserve the economy at the same time, Deal with it, asswipes!

So yeah if the virus keeps workers shut in, and our health care providers at risk,  another trillion or two trillion will be needed! We provide it because if we have a grain of human decency in our DNA that is what we do. And we smile when we pay out what's needed and stop proposing cockamamey bullshit like "loans"  from the IRS, or tax cuts!   To say or do anything other than providing extended paid leave- in multiple checks if need be - would be not only grossly wrongheaded, but immoral.

Meantime, the walking pestilence fouling the White House-a  cowardly imp who ran from service 5 times using bone spurs- declared himself a "wartime president".   And yet, as our hospitals and ERs begin to crater because of lack of supplies (protective masks, ventilators, room respirators to clear air in patients' rooms etc.) he refuses to invoke a Korean War era Defense production law.  This would at least enable U.S. industry to begin producing most of the medical necessities now in short supply.  Why won't this coward act now?  He claims  wants to wait until "it's really needed".  The time is now you execrable POS not when 90 % of medical providers themselves get ill and we face a collapse like Italy.    You cannot just yelp "Abracadabra!" and have all the supplies appear!

I will have more to write tomorrow about the low IQ Millennials who continue to congregate (like on Florida beaches)  and refuse to hunker down like the rest of us.  They are putting the entire social distancing strategy at risk with their selfish, short sighted behavior and inability to see beyond their own noses.

See also:

• 'Wartime president' still waiting on 'worst case scenario' to boost medical supply production 

• Pelosi: Trump must 'immediately' use Defense Production Act to produce critically needed equipment 

And:

Emergency Socialism ... for Corporations

And:

Coronavirus | Economic Policy

What’s Missing From the Coronavirus Bill

by Robert Reich | March 18, 2020 - 7:01am | permalink

Pelosi's House Bill - Thanks To Repub Extortion To Change It- Puts Millions More Americans At Risk

The despicable, congenital asshole Dotard demanded no "goodies" (universal paid leave for workers) otherwise he'd sign no coronavirus aid package.


On Friday evening - seeing the just passed House aid package for this COVID-19 crisis - Janice and I felt confident the Speaker (Nancy Pelosi) has done "God's justice" in getting the best aid deal she could for American workers.  (HR 6201:   'Families First Coronavirus Response Act') Included in the original bill were:  expanded food stamps security, expanded unemployment insurance, free COVID-19 testing  and paid leave for all American workers . The last including all those in low paid jobs, as well as part timers, who get sick - or need to stay at home with kids.  It turned out to be a  mirage - given she and the Dems ended up in a disgusting shakedown "compromise" i.e.  to get a revised version passed, more like "Families Last". . In fact, given this is a national emergency I call a spade a spade and say outright the Dems surrendered to Repuke extortion.

Here's a head scratcher and also heads up:  After a Waffle House employee tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this month, the company refused to promise it would pay other sick workers to stay home.  Perverse? A moral atrocity?  Risking many dozens more Americans being made sick by unpaid sick workers?  Not under this rejiggered, extorted  House bill, whereby Waffle House would qualify for a big-company exemption.  In other words, American workers who may have to take off work to stay home with shuttered kids- or are sick themselves- are being kneecapped.  The big "benefit" package we all believed the House Dems were getting through was just a mirage.  The Repukes ended up taking House Dems' lunch money and getting way with it.  What happened to fighting for a broad paid leave package to get to all workers  for at least 2 weeks if they need it?

As usual, when the rubber hit the road the Dems turned tail and ran like frightened rabbits, so intent on getting any bill passed, to show they are paying attention as the COVID-19 outbreak spreads.  As a NY Times editorial properly asked:

"Would Ms. Pelosi please explain why the House decided not to require Waffle House to protect its workers and customers by paying for sick leave?"

The editors were referring to the fact the bill guarantees sick leave only to about 20 percent of workers. Big employers like McDonald’s and Amazon are not required to provide any paid sick leave, while companies with fewer than 50 employees can seek hardship exemptions from the Trump administration.  Sure the bill does require some employers to provide full-time workers with up to 10 days of paid leave, but this does not apply to the nation’s largest employers — companies with 500 or more workers.(Note: As per a WSJ report, (Mar. 12, p. B2)  Amazon will now voluntarily provide paid leave to both full and part time workers, as announced last Wednesday.). This lot together employs roughly 54 percent of all workers.So much for Trump asslicker Mike Pence's lie:

“If you are sick, stay home.  You’re not going to miss a pay check.”

Never mind Pence's lie, we know he lies just about like his master, Dotard.  We expected more from Pelosi as opposed to a pathetic, half- hearted  bill that shows a lack of will to fight on workers' behalf .  This is especially when we know this is the very time each American family needs: a) A straight, no strings, tax free check for $1,000 to cover costs, and b) paid leave for at least 2 weeks if they are sick or need to tend to their at home kids. Not to have these provisions discloses Pelosi too easily sold out to the 'pukes and their austerity assholes.  We also know the price in increased infections and not flattening the curve- allowing hospitals nationwide to be overrun -could be the price finally paid. A price about 100 times greater than the niggardly Repubs are trying to save.

Our own  (Colorado) Sen. Ken Buck, even with these exemptions, called the hollow bill a "boondoggle" (Denver Post, Saturday)  prompting a good friend to wish for him to get sick with the virus and have to stay home with wife, or kids. Oh, but wait! He's in the U.S. Senate so can take off any fucking time he wants and has gold standard health care. Excuse the hell out of me for calling out this asswipe.

As the Times editors put it, "Sick workers should stay home, but there is no guarantee in the emergency legislation that most of them will get paid."

The   fact those sick workers - say at Burger King or MickeyD's- may have to show up to flip burgers to get paid (and spread the virus to customers), shows  the Trump White House and congressional Republicans will have to bear primary responsibility. Say if the outbreak overwhelms U.S. hospitals and we see what's happening in Italy happen here. Also, they will bear responsibility for the increased deaths - which could run in the hundreds of thousands.

It is true that some big companies do provide voluntary paid leave, for example Walmart allows up to two weeks of paid leave for workers who fall ill or are quarantined because of a confirmed exposure to the virus.  Other large employers, including Target, Gap and Wawa, have made similar announcements. But such voluntary policies are not enough because the bulk of America's lowest paid workers - often those in retail and fast food (hence with the most public contact) are excluded.

So pardon me, but his party of  red state cockroaches bears  the primary responsibility for the abomination of prioritizing corporate profits in the midst of a public health emergency.  It is especially execrable as these vermin  insisted on the exemptions as the price of bipartisan support for the legislation,   But make no mistake Pelosi is not totally off the hook, as she didn't fight hard enough.  As the Times put it:

"Why not pass a bill that required all employers to provide paid sick leave and then force Republicans to explain their objections to the public?"

This would have at least put the Reeps on the defensive, and having multiple pressers could have pushed the case to show they were the ones holding up action. But Nancy didn't do this for whatever reason, perhaps sensing time wasn't her friend and some kind of action - any action, even only delivering a half loaf (or in this case, one fifth)  -  was needed.  As for the small (50 or fewer employee businesses) a rational solution to their fretting over giving paid leave is for the gov't to provide each with an emergency subsidy - say $1- 2 m each - to cover the cost of paid leave for their workers.  As one economist noted on CNN Saturday, "$50-60 billion stimulus for the scale of employment dislocation we face is absurd. We're gonna need at least $1 trillion and even that may not be enough."

But if that pathetic bill full of loopholes translates into 20 million more Americans infected, and 1 million dying what was the point?    To appease a bunch of reprobates who wish to destroy the whole basis of functioning government anyway?  As Joe Conason spelled it out in a recent smirkingchimp.com blog post ('Conservatism Is Going To Kill Us All'):

"For the past three years, Trump and the Republicans have busied themselves with attacks on our government’s intelligence capabilities, our health systems, even the health coverage that would enable Americans to cope with an epidemic like coronavirus might become. They railed against “the deep state”; they sabotaged fundamental services; they behaved as if society needs no sentinels or guard posts; and now they pretend to be able to protect us."

That says it all and I don't need to add more. Suffice it to say Pelosi and the House Dems dropped the ball big time and this could come back to bite them in November.  Before signing off let me note that Charlie Crist (D, FLA) was more optimistic on AM Joy today,  forecasting a "come to Jesus"  moment for the pukes to agree to change the bill back- or at least award more paid leave. According to Charlie, who put on his Pollyanna garb instead of big boy pants (imho):

"Well, I think you're gonna see this thing expand. The Speaker wanted to get something passed, Very smart of her!  She wanted to have something ready for  the Senate to vote on, hopefully on Monday. I think that was responsible.  It was an amazing bill. You have paid leave, sick leave, for the poor. It's very comprehensive and I think an important first step.  The longest journey begins with one step and I am sure we can improve it. I am confident of it!"

Well, Mr Crist, I would be as well IF there were a Dem president instead of Trump and a Dem Senate, as opposed to a bunch of spinelsss Republican whelps who pant to kiss Trump's ass every second of every day.  Just saying.   But if that  political wishful thinking of yours doesn't manifest then millions more American workers are shafted and many times more trusting citizens will be put at risk for getting this illness  - including seniors.


See also:

Coronavirus | Economic Policy | Wealth Inequality

Does the Coronavirus Crisis Have to End with a Wealthier Wealthy?

And:

Coronavirus | Donald Trump

Trump Is Running a Pandemic Response Like a Business, With Disastrous Results

And:

Coronavirus | Healthcare Policy

America’s Homeless Are Among Most Susceptible to COVID-19. We Cannot Forget Them.