Mark Gruenberg: Too little, too late COVID aid bill may pass today [feedly]

Too little, too late COVID aid bill may pass today
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/too-little-too-late-covid-aid-bill-may-pass-today/

WASHINGTON—Today, as California accepted shipments of tens of thousands of extra body bags in which to place its dead, a very stripped-down package of coronavirus aid, we are told, is finally moving ahead in Congress.

Lawmakers are rushing to finish their business so they can go home until the New Year. For all too many Americans, meanwhile, going home is not an option. Home, for them, was lost because of the inability of the Trump administration to properly manage the coronavirus crisis.

But there are problems ahead, both in how much is allotted and who would get it—and, Unite Here pointed out, who got past aid and didn't deserve it.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers from both houses of Congress unveiled two pieces of coronavirus-related legislation. The larger one, worth $748 billion, which they all agreed on, included $300 weekly federal unemployment checks from Jan. 1 through April 30.

That money would top off regular state jobless benefits to workers who still qualify for them, just as prior $600 weekly checks did. For those whose state aid ran out or who legally can't seek regular jobless aid—such as "independent contractors," farm workers, home health care workers, and "gig economy" workers—the $300 would stand alone.

But there are no one-time $1,200 checks for all adults and $500 per kid, as there were in the biggest prior aid bill, the Cares Act, approved in March. Sens. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt.,  threatened to hold up everything unless those checks are included, too.

"As a result of the pandemic, tens of millions of Americans are facing economic desperation," Sanders said.  "They can't afford to pay their rent and face eviction, they can't afford to go to the doctor, they can't afford to feed their children and they are going deeper and deeper into debt.

"Congress cannot go home…until we pass legislation which provides a $1,200 direct payment to working-class adults, $2,400 for couples, and a $500 payment to their children. This is what Democrats and Republicans did unanimously in March through the Cares Act. This is what we have to do today."

May not be going home

They may not be going home anyway. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced on Dec. 15 lawmakers would not leave town until they approved a coronavirus aid package.

But there's also no money in the big bill for state and local governments, which have seen their revenues tank since the coronavirus-caused business closures produced a depression that drove joblessness up over 20% at one point.

The smaller $160 billion measure is in return for a two-year version of McConnell's business bonanza: Exempting virtually all firms from lawsuits under coronavirus aid laws, and most labor laws, even if they don't protect workers and consumers from exposure to the sometimes fatal plague.

Senate Democrats, both Democratic-leaning Senate independents, and Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John E. Kennedy of Louisiana support the state and local aid and the Democrats and independents, at least, aren't budging. Without it, state and local governments will have to fire even more police, Fire Fighters, aid workers, and nurses—even as those groups must aid pandemic victims.

And trading the state (60%) and local (40%) money for the lawsuit ban, including banning suits when firms break labor laws, is a non-starter, said Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry and other speakers at a telephone press conference against McConnell's scheme.

The larger measure also would extend a student loan repayment moratorium through April 30 and a ban on evictions and mortgage foreclosures through the end of January.

K-12 schools would get $54 billion for anti-virus measures so students forced into Zoom and distance learning by the coronavirus pandemic could eventually come back to class, while colleges would get $20 billion. Governors would get $7.5 billion in extra money for hardest-hit schools, but one-third of that must go to private schools.

Amtrak ($1 billion), mass transit ($15 billion), and the Postal Service (another $10 billion line of credit, without federal conditions) would benefit. So would airline workers.

The Payroll Support Program, which the Association of Flight Attendants pushed for and got earlier this year, ended on August 31, and the carriers have since fired thousands of workers. It'll start again on Jan. 1 and run through March 31, a summary fact sheet on the bigger economic aid bill said. Politico reported it would get $17 billion, and the fact sheet said the money would go directly to workers.

"Flight attendants were promised imminent relief when furloughs began Oct. 1," AFA-CWA President Sara Nelson said on Dec 15. "The stress and strain put on people who can't imagine why 'overwhelming support' doesn't turn into real relief has made the hardship and loss during this pandemic all the more painful. All we need is a vote to save lives and livelihoods. Leadership needs to bring this bipartisan package to a vote as soon as possible."

Includes money to help states

The bigger money bill would include $6 billion to states for developing and distributing coronavirus vaccines and their use, plus $7 billion for coronavirus testing and tracing. Of that sum, $2 billion would go to nursing homes, whose residents and workers are at high risk for coronavirus illness and death.

Those sums, plus the aid to workers, recognize the coronavirus pandemic—which as of 4 p.m. on Dec. 15 has killed 302,294 people, among the 16.64 million who have tested positive and caused the economic depression which produced the need for the aid in the first place.

Businesses would get another $300 billion through the Payroll Protection Program, this time with safeguards, such as limiting the size of eligible individual companies' workforces. That's a congressional attempt to fix problems in the PPP program. Companies got those "forgivable" loans if they kept workers on.

But Unite Here is blowing the whistle on the PPP. It released an analysis showing five Omni Hotels, in New Haven, Conn., Boston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Providence, R.I., took $15 million in PPP loans but have not rehired 80% of their workers, who are all Unite Here members. The Providence, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh hotels are still closed.

"The failure of these hotels to rehire their employees has financially harmed our members and created great uncertainty for them and their families. So far, we have not received commitments from Omni to use the loans to fully rehire the workers we represent," Unite Here's Carlos Aramayo wrote to the Small Business Administration and the Treasury, which jointly run the loan program.

And buried in the fact sheet about the larger measure is that of the total of $908 billion combined, $429 billion (43%) is unused money from the $3 trillion Cares Act.

"Food banks are overwhelmed with requests, small businesses are being forced to shut their doors again, we are on the verge of a devastating housing crisis and millions of Americans still find themselves unemployed," explained the lead crafter of the two measures, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va.

Manchin called the measures "a compromise that will carry the American people through April 1st to ensure our healthcare crisis doesn't become an economic catastrophe." By then, lawmakers expect but did not say, that new Democratic President Joe Biden will have submitted a further aid package.

Union leaders had a mixed reaction to the economic aid package, but they're still dead set against McConnell's business bonanza scheme, even though Manchin cut it from five years to two, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2020.

Outrageous and immoral

"It's outrageous and immoral but not surprising," SEIU President Henry told the telephone press conference against McConnell's scheme, assembled by Public Citizen. That group's communications director, Derrick Robinson, noted public protest has stopped McConnell's bonanza since he first floated the idea six months ago. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, later crafted it into the wide-ranging lawsuit ban.

Instead, Henry declared, lawmakers must "protect the workers who are keeping us safe, healthy, and fed during this crisis." SEIU includes many of the "essential" workers, such as nurses, janitors, and sanitation workers, forced to toil at increased coronavirus risk to themselves and their families. Those workers have disproportionately sickened and died and are also disproportionately workers of color.

Nelson agreed while saying the aid package is grudging.

"Tens of millions of Americans are on the brink of disaster and we won't make it to the New Year without emergency federal aid. This package is not enough for recovery, but it will keep us from total disaster until a real recovery plan can be put in place," she explained.

"Americans have been waiting seven long months for the Senate to provide COVID-19 relief," the Teamsters tweeted, using the official name for the coronavirus. "The Senate should not go on vacation until they pass comprehensive aid. @senatemajldr: Our states, cities, towns, and schools can't wait around for you to do your job. #FundtheFrontLines," it said.

Then it demanded citizen action to put pressure on lawmakers.

"Evictions Food insecurity Losing health care Snowy, icy roads Dirty water 9-1-1 operators laid off Trash in the streets Winter is coming. Congress must #FundtheFrontLines so we have the public services we need to beat this pandemic. ACT NOW: Call 1-888-981-9704," the union's second tweet said.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Milton Friedman was wrong on the corporation

 

Milton Friedman was wrong on the corporation

Martin Wolf

What should be the goal of the business corporation? For a long time, the prevailing view in English-speaking countries and, increasingly, elsewhere was that advanced by the economist Milton Friedman in a New York Times article, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits", published in September 1970. I used to believe this, too. I was wrong. The article deserves to be read in full. But its kernel is in its conclusion: "there is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." The implications of this position are simple and clear. That is its principal virtue. But, as H L Mencken is supposed to have said (though may not have done), "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong". This is a powerful example of that truth. After 50 years, the doctrine needs re-evaluation. Suitably, given Friedman's connection with the University of Chicago, the Stigler Center at its Booth School of Business has just published an ebook, Milton Friedman 50 Years Later, containing diverse views. In an excellent concluding article, Luigi Zingales, who promoted the debate, tries to give a balanced assessment. Yet, in my view, his analysis is devastating. He asks a simple question: "Under what conditions is it socially efficient for managers to focus only on maximising shareholder value?" His answer is threefold: "First, companies should operate in a competitive environment, which I will define as firms being both price- and rule-takers. Second, there should not be externalities (or the government should be able to address perfectly these externalities through regulation and taxation). Third, contracts are complete, in the sense that we can specify in a contract all relevant contingencies at no cost." Needless to say, none of these conditions holds. Indeed, the existence of the corporation shows that they do not hold. The invention of the corporation allowed the creation of huge entities, in order to exploit economies of scale. Given their scale, the notion of businesses as price-takers is absurd. Externalities, some of them global, are evidently pervasive. Corporations also exist because contracts are incomplete. If it were possible to write contracts that specified every eventuality, the ability of management to respond to the unexpected would be redundant. Above all, corporations are not rule-takers but rather rulemakers. They play games whose rules they have a big role in creating, via politics. My contribution to the ebook emphasises this last point by asking what a good "game" would look like. "It is one," I argue, "in which companies would not promote junk science on climate and the environment; it is one in which companies would not kill hundreds of thousands of people, by promoting addiction to opiates; it is one in which companies would not lobby for tax systems that let them park vast proportions of their profits in tax havens; it is one in which the financial sector would not lobby for the inadequate capitalisation that causes huge crises; it is one in which copyright would not be extended and extended and extended; it is one in which companies would not seek to neuter an effective competition policy; it is one in which companies would not lobby hard against efforts to limit the adverse social consequences of precarious work; and so on and so forth." It is true, as many authors in this compendium argue, that the limited liability business corporation was (and is) a brilliant institutional innovation. It is true, too, that making corporate objectives more complex is likely to be problematic. So when Steve Kaplan of the Booth School asks how corporations should trade off many different goals, I have sympathy. Similarly, when business leaders tell us they are now going to serve the wider needs of society, I ask: first, do I believe they will do so; second, do I believe they know how to do so; and, last, who elected them to do so? Yet the problems with the grossly unbalanced economic, social and political power inherent in the current situation are vast. On this, the contribution of Anat Admati of Stanford University is compelling. She notes that corporations have obtained a host of political and civil rights but lack corresponding obligations. Among other things, people are rarely held criminally liable for corporate crimes. Purdue Pharma, now in bankruptcy, pleaded guilty to criminal charges for its handling of the painkiller OxyContin, which addicted vast numbers of people. Individuals are routinely imprisoned for dealing illegal drugs, but as she points out "no individual within Purdue went to jail". Not least, unbridled corporate power has been a factor behind the rise of populism, especially rightwing populism. Consider how one goes about persuading people to accept Friedman's libertarian economic ideas. In a universal-suffrage democracy, it is really difficult. To win, libertarians have had to ally themselves with ancillary causes — culture wars, racism, misogyny, nativism, xenophobia and nationalism. Much of this has of course been sotto voce and so plausibly deniable. The 2008 financial crisis, and the subsequent bailout of those whose behaviour caused it, made selling a deregulated free-market even harder. So, it became politically essential for libertarians to double down on those ancillary causes. Mr Trump was not the person they wanted: he was erratic and unprincipled, but he was the political entrepreneur best suited to winning the presidency. He has given them what they most wanted: tax cuts and deregulation. There are many arguments to be had over how corporations should change. But the biggest issue by far is how to create good rules of the game on competition, labour, the environment, taxation and so forth. Friedman assumed either that none of this mattered or that a working democracy would survive prolonged attack by people who thought as he did. Neither assumption proved correct. The challenge is to create good rules of the game, via politics. Today, we cannot.  

--
John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV
Enlighten Radio
Socialist Economics
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Choice in Health Care Plans and Medicare: It’s More Complicated [feedly]

Choice in Health Care Plans and Medicare: It's More Complicated
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/beat_the_press/~3/qk1wpxVpF6o/

Margot Sanger-Katz had a very good NYT piece on the difficulty of choosing among health insurance plans. The gist of the piece is that people have a very difficult time choosing among plans, and even well-educated people often make choices that are bad for them. (The highlight is that Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman could not sort through the plan options at his university job.)

After presenting evidence that most people make bad choices, and low-income people do worst, at the end of the piece she turns to Medicare and notes that over a third of the people receiving benefits choose a private Medicare Advantage plan rather than the tradition government plan. Sanger-Katz takes this to mean that people do value choice in health care plans.

However, it is inaccurate to present the issue here as the traditional Medicare plan being a vote for no-choice versus Medicare Advantage as a vote for choice. The traditional plan now involves three separate programs: Part A, Part B, and Part D. Part D is actually a set of private plans, offering prescription drug benefits, that people must choose between.

In addition, the vast majority of people in traditional Medicare (81 percent) also have a private supplemental plan. This is in large part because the traditional plan has not been modernized in many decades. It doesn't cover dental care, hearing aids, and many other health care services that would generally be regarded as essential. It also, unlike Medicare Advantage plans, has no out-of-pocket spending cap. These gaps have likely been by design to force people to either opt for Medicare Advantage or buy a private supplemental plan.

The key point for the choice issue is that even those opting for the traditional Medicare plan still have to deal with many choices in arranging their coverage. So it is wrong to present the selection of Medicare Advantage or traditional Medicare as a choice/no-choice scenario.

The post Choice in Health Care Plans and Medicare: It's More Complicatedappeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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Reimagining Workplace Protections: A Policy Agenda to Meet Independent Contractors’ and Temporary Workers’ Needs [feedly]

Reimagining Workplace Protections: A Policy Agenda to Meet Independent Contractors' and Temporary Workers' Needs
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/reimagining-workplace-protections-policy-agenda-meet-independent-contractors-and-temporary-workers-needs

Millions of workers in nonstandard arrangements, including temporary, subcontracted, and on-call workers and independent contractors, lack access to essential workplace protections or, where protections do exist, to adequate enforcement mechanisms. Building an equitable economy requires addressing these shortcomings and reimagining our system of workplace protections. This report provides a policy framework for expanding essential protections to more workers, focusing on independent contractors' and temporary workers' needs.  

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Biz Insider: 'Unacceptable': Democrats reject new White House proposal that would slash weekly unemployment benefits in exchange for one-off $600 stimulus checks [feedly]

'Unacceptable': Democrats reject new White House proposal that would slash weekly unemployment benefits in exchange for one-off $600 stimulus checks
https://www.businessinsider.com/democrats-reject-white-house-proposal-containing-stimulus-checks-2020-12?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer conducting a news conference to discuss coronavirus-relief legislation on November 12.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

• Democratic leaders are rejecting a new coronavirus relief package unveiled Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
• The White House proposal calls for new $600 direct payments to Americans but would fund them by taking money from a proposed boost in unemployment benefits.
• "That is unacceptable," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Democrats are rejecting a White House proposal to fund new a new round of direct payments to Americans by slashing money for the unemployed.

On Tuesday evening, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin proposed a new $916 billion COVID-19 stimulus package that would offer relief funding to state and local governments in exchange for "robust liability protections" for businesses, protecting them from employee lawsuits over the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace.

Mnuchin's proposal, welcomed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, also includes money for a round of one-off $600 payments - the funds coming, in part, by slashing a proposed $300-a-week boost in unemployment benefits.

"That is unacceptable," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement.

The Democratic lawmakers noted that a bipartisan stimulus package called for providing $180 billion in new funding for unemployment insurance, a figure that would be slashed to $40 billion under the White House offer.

A $3 trillion spending package passed by House Democrats in May calls for $1,200 direct payments.

"While it is progress that Leader McConnell has signed off on a $916 billion offer that is based off of the bipartisan framework, the president's proposal must not be allowed to obstruct the bipartisan congressional talks that are underway," they said.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Bloomberg: China's State-Backed Virus Vaccine Has 86% Efficacy, Says UAE [feedly]

China's State-Backed Virus Vaccine Has 86% Efficacy, Says UAE
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-09/uae-says-sinopharm-vaccine-has-86-efficacy-against-covid-19

China's state-backed coronavirus vaccine protected 86% of people against Covid-19 in trials conducted in the United Arab Emirates, state media there reported, giving credence to the quickly developed shot that Beijing intends to distribute around the developing world.

The data was from trials that included 31,000 volunteers in the UAE, which found the vaccine was highly effective in preventing moderate and severe cases of Covid-19 and had no serious safety concerns, according to the report, which cited the country's Ministry of Health and Prevention.

That's expected to pave the way for full public use of the vaccine and a re-opening of the Gulf nation's economy, the ministry said. In an early sign of how the vaccine could be a gamechanger, Abu Dhabi officials said that they would start working with local authorities to "resume all activities within two weeks," including economic, tourism and cultural operations.

The emirate's public health authority didn't immediately respond to requests for comment, but a recorded message offered the option of booking an appointment for the shot at its primary health-care centers.

Developed by Sinopharm unit China National Biotec Group Co., the vaccine has already been administered to hundreds of thousands of people under emergency authorization in China, but it's yet to receive public use approval from any drug regulators. CNBG did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

China's Vaccine Web

Almost 100 countries have vaccine links with the Asian giant so far

Data compiled by Bloomberg

With an 86% efficacy rate, the vaccine would almost meet the high bar set by Western front-runners, but those companies have disclosed more detail. It's part of President Xi Jinping's promise to make any Chinese shot a "global public good" as part of the effort to rehabilitate the Asian country's image after the pandemic emerged from its city of Wuhan.

The protection rate of CNBG's shot is also higher than the results from the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford. Data last month showed their shot was 70% effective on average in a late-stage study.

The CNBG vaccine could become a more favorable option to vaccinate large swathes of the developing world. While mRNA vaccines from Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. showed higher efficacy of more than 90%, those present distribution challenges for some nations as they require deep-freeze facilities and trucks. CNBG's vaccine can be transported and stored at normal refrigerated temperatures.

Inactivated Vaccines

The Chinese vaccine, made using an inactivated version of the coronavirus to prime human immune systems to fight it, was among the first candidates that raced into the crucial final stage of human trials. While Pfizer and Moderna are among developers relying on novel technology, manufacturers have decades of experience with the method that the Chinese company is using.

Still, those inactivated vaccines can require multiple booster shots to achieve strong immunity, and production means handling large amounts of the virus. In theory, mRNA vaccines should be much faster to manufacture, because they require only tiny volumes of raw material to produce millions of doses.

Nearly a year into the pandemic, over 68 million people have been infected and and more than 1.5 million killed. Countries like Indonesia and Pakistan have already signed deals with CNBG and others are now likely to emerge, given the vaccine's suitability for developing countries.

China has two other developers conducting final-stage trials globally. One of them, Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech Ltd., is in the midst of analyzing data from its Phase III trial in Brazil and could release efficacy data within days.

— With assistance by Farah Elbahrawy, Dong Lyu, Abeer Abu Omar, Claire Che, and James Paton

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Enlighten Radio:Talkin Socialism: The R sweep in Appalachia -- How Did it Happen?

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Blog: Enlighten Radio
Post: Talkin Socialism: The R sweep in Appalachia -- How Did it Happen?
Link: https://www.enlightenradio.org/2020/11/talkin-socialism-r-sweep-in-appalachia.html

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