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Unsanitized: The COVID-19 Report for Aug. 12, 2020

A Modest Proposal: It's Time to Sue Every Corporation to Prevent a
Depression
Plus, how Big Media rips off its competitors

 

The only way to break the impasse on a bipartisan deal for coronavirus
economic relief is to put legal pressure on corporations. (Weiss
Paarz/Creative Commons)

First Response

Amid the Trump and circumstance and everyone's take on Kamala Harris,
we have lost sight of an economic depression now playing out in slow
motion. As of this moment, no unemployed person in America is getting
anything above their state's share in weekly checks. After governors
pushed back strongly

on Trump's executive measure, which would have had them pony up 25
percent of a $400 unemployment boost (California
,
Kentucky
,
New Jersey
,
and really everybody; this map
lists the
states that have spoken publicly on it), the White House acknowledged
that the state share will not be required
,
and unemployed workers will just get $300. This appears to be illegal
under the statutory authority they're using to do this unilaterally,
which requires a 25 percent match. But since when has the law been
relevant?

When anyone will get even that $300 is an open question, as it will take
significant reprogramming of state unemployment systems. Meanwhile, I
haven't heard a single company say they'll actually stop withholding
payroll taxes to give workers a temporary, ephemeral 6.2 percent pay
boost. So for the foreseeable future, the economic impact of the Trump
unilateral actions is nothing.

There is increasingly no hope of actual talks to create a Congressional
package. Claims from both sides

that they're "open
"
to talks haven't led any to happen, the chief of staff and chief
enforcer

in deal negotiations Mark Meadows has left town for a week, and the
House is out of town

until September 14. Every expectation is that nothing will happen

until at least then, and I think it could be longer. You have
Republicans who've found their inner deficit hawk cheerleading failure
,
and in general there's nothing compelling bringing them to the table,
after the corporate bailout was set in motion in March.

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In the meantime, we can expect the economy to deteriorate, potentially
rapidly. More rent payments are getting put on credit cards
, a
sign of financial stress. People are liquidating 401(k) plans

for ready cash. Food pantries are seeing record demand
.
The evictions have begun
.
People are saving in expectation of an extended recession, creating the
vicious cycle that leads to recession-induced job loss, not just
pandemic-related layoffs. State and local budget crunches

(5.6 percent annualized spending cuts last quarter, with more to come)
are just going to compound this pain, and the federal government has
pulled out all the supports for the economy. This situation is dire.

What can be done about it? How can depression be prevented through a
fiscal deal?

The answer, in my estimation, lies in suing every corporation in sight.

There are only a couple ways to get Republicans, who have little
interest in further relief on its own, to the table to make a deal. One
would be a collapse of the stock market. But it's approaching an
all-time high
,
and whatever stumble came at the end of yesterday's session after
fears of an impasse on fiscal relief have subsided by today, as stocks
are up . As long as the Fed keeps
vowing to inflate assets, and as long as the companies dominating the
Dow-Big Tech, essentially-keep expanding their market position,
there's little reason for investors to worry.

Even if the market does deteriorate as the reality of the next
depression hits, by that time we'll be in the undertow of an economic
collapse. This is not what you want to wait for to get Republicans to
think seriously about a fiscal response. So hoping stocks go under is
not a realistic option.

The only other thing that has roused Republicans in recent weeks is this
idea that corporations will be endlessly sued by workers and customers
over contracting COVID-19, and that we need a mass liability release to
protect them. The problem is that there is no flood of lawsuits

at the moment, relieving the pressure for this. But let's do a thought
experiment here. What if every trial lawyer in America started streaming
into courts with wrongful death and injury lawsuits? What if every
corporation in America suddenly had to deal with liability on a mass
scale? What if the suits sought to make CEOs personally liable for this
activity?

Maybe the courts are so in hock to corporate interests that this
wouldn't cause much concern either. But I'd gather that more
lobbyists would be in the ear of Republicans to get to bargaining if
there were thousands of lawsuits hanging over them, compared to now,
when almost no suits have been filed.

Sure, what would result would be distasteful: Republicans would eagerly
seek immunity for corporations' role in the deaths of thousands of
people. But this depression will also kill thousands of people. And
what's standing in the way of that right now is a lack of interest on
the part of Republicans to do anything about it. The immunity can be
written far more narrowly than Mitch McConnell's opening bid, which
pretty much would have put medical malpractice cases on ice for five
years. But at least if immunity were on the table, there might actually
be a negotiation.

This modest proposal reverses the terrible mistake Democrats made in not
getting long-lasting relief the last time there was something
Republicans wanted. That's going to come at a high cost.

Unfortunately, liberals aren't the well-organized machine of
conservative fever dreams. There is no Bat-signal to the trial lawyers
to start ramping up cases. But that's what I think it'll take for
there to be any interest in an actual bargain. It's sad, of course.
But it's also necessary.

Support Independent, Fact-Checked Journalism

Odds and Sods

Some Monopolized
news: I
was on BNN Bloomberg (the Canadian version of the business network)
discussing the book. Watch here
.
I also was on the LitHub podcast with Andrew Keen for a long discussion.
Listen here
.

WHYY's Radio Times had me on yesterday to discuss the Big Tech
hearings. Listen here
.

And at about 8:30 of this "Closer Look" segment on Late Night with Seth
Meyers, you can see a clip from me talking about the post office. Watch
here
.

I'm deliberately not linking to a New York Times story that blatantly
rips off The Capitol Forum and us, in telling the story about the Postal
Service seeking

to force higher postage rates from
states to deliver mail-in ballots
without crediting the originators (see the links) who told the story.
This is depressingly common and an extension of many of the themes in
Monopolized, with big incumbents muscling out competition by just
copying them. The Times' building facilities department is probably
bigger than our staff and the Capitol Forum's combined. They have
every ability to get their own stories. And if they don't, one line of
credit saying where it originated from is literally the least they can
do. It's shameful and designed to undermine media diversity, as in
"nobody should exist but the New York Times." So get your Times coverage
elsewhere from now on.

This piece from Katya Schwenk

on the history of one privately managed ICE facility where almost 90
percent of the detainees have contracted coronavirus is first-rate. And
we have Shera Avi-Yonah, one of our interns, on the struggles of voter
registration drives

during the pandemic.

You can read all of our coronavirus coverage at prospect.org/coronavirus
. And email me
with tips, comments, and perspectives.

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Days Without a Bailout Oversight Chair

139
.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* There go the Big Ten and Pac 12 college football seasons
.
The other Power 5 conferences are so far scheduled to muddle through.
(ESPN)

* Increasingly, nobody wants to send their kids

to school right now. (Politico/Morning Consult poll)

* The coronavirus has killed the Trump rally
,
if you're looking for a silver lining. (Washington Post)

* Small businesses fall prey to cash lenders

profiting from the pandemic. (NBC News)

* Epic Systems, a terrible monopoly health billing management business,
is also a terrible employer

in the work from home era. (Jacobin)

* Youyang Gu's tweet thread
forces us to
look at outbreaks not by country or by state but as highly local events.
(Youyang Gu on Twitter)

* Really the UK's economy, not America's, has fallen off the cliff

faster than any developed nation. (Wall Street Journal)

* Is it better if the insider trading Kodak executive gave his shares to
charity
?
(Financial Times)

* Smash Mouth at Sturgis

before a crowd without masks during a pandemic, I think that needs to be
prohibited in the Constitution. (USA Today)

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