"SBA program reopens with new glitches, new scrutiny; NBA team returns loan money" by Aaron Gregg, Renae Merle and Ben Golliver Washington Post, April 27, 2020
WASHINGTON — The government’s small-business loan program received $310 billion in fresh funding last week but came under immediate pressure Monday as many bankers complained about new technology glitches and fresh questions were raised about the mostly anonymous list of beneficiaries.
As bankers expressed fury that the Small Business Administration’s online portal was faltering, the Los Angeles Lakers organization confirmed it had received a taxpayer-backed loan under the program in recent weeks.
That's when my mouth was left agape, and as I turn to page C3 I am greeted with this:
Bob Rivers, CEO of Eastern Bank, said that community banks “are stalled while the very largest banks draw down this limited funding.” (Blake Nissen/ For The Boston Globe)
The NBA franchise said it was returning the $4.6 million, something several other well-off firms have done after their participation was revealed.
I gue$$ those were the paychecks they were protecting. The $ports world has gone along with the $hutdown, proving that higher forces are at work and that the alleged bailout loot is directed at preserving in$titutions that the elite want to retain going forward after the mass slaughter of humanity. The loot is part of the hu$h money as careers will be resumed in 2022 so enjoy the time off.
One a more trivial note, how did they get the $$$?
They apply for it at a bank?
Which bank approved it?
At this point, the looters can keep their ill-gotten gains and buy everything up as long as they back off and let us resume our miserable lives without inoculations and tracking tracers -- but they won't. We are dealing with sick satanic psychopaths of the highest evil. May God hear our prayers.
The Trump administration has tried to defend the program, which has now received almost $700 billion in congressionally appropriated funds, because it is meant to give taxpayer-backed, forgivable loans to companies if they retain or rehire workers during the pandemic. After more than 26 million Americans filed unemployment claims in less than two months, policy makers are trying to come up with programs to keep people employed, but the program — known as the Paycheck Protection Program and operated by the Small Business Administration — has been overwhelmed, because of a surge in applications and the uneven process by which some companies receive loans and others do not. Within an hour after the SBA reopened its online portal, known as E-Tran, for submissions Monday, banking officials began to complain the system was either not working or was painfully slow.
Are you sick of the goddamn excu$es yet?
Wall $treet got their $6 trillion no problem, no glitches, but saving your $hit entrepreneurial dream is beset with problems and the money has disappeared into the pockets of the bank$ters, the well-connected, and any agenda-pushing concern that be needed in the future.
The American people have been cheated as $ports teams have been shown to cheat the last few years -- including the beloved Red $awx and Patriots. Did you know they were going to kill your games, or were you $portos duped?
”Massachusetts banks of all sizes were frustrated that more small businesses couldn’t be helped today with PPP 2. SBA’s loan system was simply overwhelmed,” Daniel Forte, president of the Massachusetts Bankers Association, said.
Eastern Bank submitted close to 5,000 applications in the first round and has another 3,000 for the second round, but on Monday the SBA changed the way it processed loans, making it slower for banks with fewer than 5,000 applications.
Eastern Bank CEO Bob Rivers contended that the change will in effect hurt community banks like his. In an e-mail, he said it took Eastern on Monday at least 30 minutes, on average, per loan to connect to E-Tran. As a result, he said, community banks “are stalled while the very largest banks draw down this limited funding.”
Then why was he smiling.
Malia Lazu at Berkshire Bank said the same about the computer system: “It was freezing up and very slow going.”
Rob Nichols, president of the American Bankers Association, wrote on Twitter that bankers were ‘‘deeply frustrated’’ and that ‘‘we have raised these issues at the highest levels.’’
The Lakers’ decision to return $4.6 million came after the SBA said Monday that more than $2 billion in small-business loans during the first round of funding had been returned or declined by companies. It was unclear if other professional sports franchises got loans.
I wonder which other $ports leagues got bailed out.
At least $500 million went to large publicly held companies, according to a Washington Post analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission records. The program was initially funded with $349 billion, which ran out in less than two weeks.
It has disappeared down a rathole and now Congre$$ wants an investigation and audit.
Experts said they expected the second round of funding to run out within days.
‘‘In the time since the previous round of funding ran out, businesses and banks have used this time to prep and perfect applications,’’ said Juleanna Glover, a Washington public affairs adviser who’s tracking the program.
‘‘Once the application portal reopens, there will be an immediate flood of tens of thousands of applicants,” she said. “Maybe millions. I’d be surprised if this next tranche lasts even 72 hours.’’
Then it's all gone before May 1.
How much more money can these guys print without this place becoming Weimar Germany (actually, we are past that now)?
Lenders said they have thousands of loan applications queued up, and some have developed technology to make it easier to file them in the SBA’s computer systems. JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, two of the largest banks, said they have tens of thousands of applications prepared. JPMorgan was the top lender in the first round of loans under the Paycheck Protection Program.
That paragraph sounds great, but where did the fir$t round of money go?
Are JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America really the mo$t tru$tworthy di$tributors?
I mean, this whole thing about we are ready to go, ready to roll. Haven't seen a damn thing yet!
The program’s electronic infrastructure has consistently struggled to handle the barrage of applications, in some cases making it hard for small businesses to apply. Banks continued to vet applications after the initial funding ran out, and industry officials warned that demand could quickly overwhelm the SBA’s computer system.
Its press director, Carol Wilkerson, said the SBA had warned small businesses that problems could occur.
‘‘SBA notified lenders yesterday that pacing of applications into the E-Tran system would occur, meaning all lenders would be able to submit at the same rate per hour,’’ Wilkerson said. ‘‘The pacing mechanism prevents any one lender from submitting thousands of loans an hour into the E-Tran system. If a lender goes above the pacing limit they will get timed out.’’
Almost as if the $y$tem was designed to f**k ya', but we all know the bankers would never $crew us all over for some loot. COVID doesn't even touch that cla$$.
The Paycheck Protection Program was a major component of the $2 trillion federal stimulus law meant to combat the economic crisis. The program empowers banks to offer federally subsidized loans at terms unavailable on the private market. Borrowers get an interest rate of just 1 percent and can have the loan forgiven if they keep paying employees through the crisis. Small businesses are allowed to self-certify that they qualify, allowing lenders to bypass much of the paperwork usually required for loans.
The banks wanted to charge 4 percent while the original government plan carried an interest rate of 0% -- and therefore a compromise of 1% usury was reached to keep the ban$ters happy because they needed to make a buckle of this!
Despite glitchy IT systems, a chaotic regulatory process, and a disappointing lack of cooperation from some big banks, the initial rollout succeeded in quickly pumping hundreds of billions into a struggling small-business community.
It couldn’t immediately be learned, though, how many companies rehired workers, as the law had intended. The SBA and the Treasury Department estimated that more than 1.66 million small businesses were helped, supporting over 30 million jobs.
Those last two paragraphs are so goddamn offensive.
Despite all the documented failures over the last month, the program has done so much good.
For a $elect few, I $uppo$e, but that's it.
--more--"
Time to clo$e the barn door after the hor$es are out:
"New panel to oversee relief spending already facing controversy" by Chris Strohm and Laura Davison Bloomberg News, April 27, 2020
An oversight committee created to root out fraud and abuse as trillions of federal dollars are spent to combat the coronavirus launched its website and announced its executive director on Monday, the first public action by a panel already ensnared in controversy.
The independent committee was created to oversee spending under the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that Congress approved and President Trump signed into law a month ago. The group, whose mandate has expanded to include almost $500 billion approved Friday, is comprised of independent inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies.
Investigations are already underway into airlines receiving federal support, the validity of tax credits claimed by businesses, the accuracy of economic stimulus payments, and the Health and Human Services Department’s adherence to safety protocols during the outbreak, according to the website.
In other words, it is a f**king me$$ -- as we knew it would be with everyone grabbing loot in the frenzied panic.
Robert A. Westbrooks was named executive director. He “most recently served as the Inspector General for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation where he helped protect the retirement benefits of 35 million American workers and retirees,” according to the statement.
Isn't that fund broke?
The effort to help small businesses retain workers, known as the Paycheck Protection Program, came under fire after big restaurant chains like Potbelly Corp. and Ruth’s Chris Steak House got loans, while many mom-and-pop operations were left stranded. Both businesses have since said they won’t accept the stimulus funding.
Yeah, if you give back the loot you should never have gotten it makes everything all good. That's the mind$et of these $ick f**ks.
Even before the group was fully operating, Trump challenged and undercut the power of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, indicating contentious times ahead to hold agencies accountable for spending and managing a bailout program for small businesses.
On April 7, Trump removed an experienced inspector general, Glenn Fine, who was appointed to chair the committee. Fine had been acting inspector general of the Defense Department, but Trump designated a new acting IG at the Pentagon, thereby demoting Fine and making him ineligible to chair the committee.
Who is Glenn Fine?
Westbrooks, the new executive director, was appointed to the watchdog role at the pension agency during the Obama administration, creating another potential target for Trump, who has criticized inspectors general named under his predecessor as prejudiced against him.
Trump also has sought to undercut oversight powers Congress provided in the CARES Act. In a signing statement accompanying the act, Trump said he doesn’t recognize a mandatory requirement that congressional leaders help select leaders of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.
Trump also said a newly established inspector general at the Treasury Department to manage investigations of pandemic-related loans doesn’t have the power to issue reports to Congress without presidential supervision.
Trump has repeatedly clashed with independent federal watchdogs, challenging their findings and implying they might have a political agenda. In early April, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, inspector general for the US intelligence agencies. Atkinson had notified Congress about a whistle-blower complaint about Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, which eventually led to Trump being impeached.
Atkinson is part of the ma$ter race.
“The recent flurry of presidential actions to undercut and sideline IGs as his administration spends historic amounts of public resources to address the pandemic should give Congress and every American grave concern about whether these resources will be used apolitically and in the public interest,” according to an April 9 article in The Hill written by Stuart Eizenstat, who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations, and Anne Pence, who served in Republican and Democratic administrations.
No relation to Mike?
As for Eizenstat, that just about says it all. He's hardcore Zionist and a lawyer.
--more--"
Oh, $tart me up:
"Startups pursue ‘free money’ with relief funds, prompting backlash" by Erin Griffithand David McCabe New York Times, April 27, 2020
Domio, a startup that offers short-term rentals, has its headquarters in a New York City loft that features beer on tap, a game room, and a wall of house slippers for visitors. The fast-growing and unprofitable company has raised $117 million in venture capital, including $100 million in August.
When the coronavirus pandemic caused Domio’s bookings to dry up last month, it laid off staff but did not ask its investors for more funding. Jay Roberts, Domio’s chief executive, said it had no immediate need to raise more money and most likely had enough cash to last until 2021.
Instead, Domio applied for a federal loan under the Paycheck Protection Program, the $349 billion plan to save jobs at small businesses during the outbreak. It received a loan on April 13. Three days later, the program’s funding ran out, even as hundreds of hard-hit restaurants, hair salons, and shops around the country missed out on the relief.
Questions about whether the funds were disbursed fairly and whether some applicants deserved them have drawn scrutiny to the aid program. Several companies that got millions of dollars in loans, such as the Shake Shack and Kura Sushi restaurant chains, faced criticism and eventually gave the money back. On Friday, President Trump signed legislation approving a fresh $320 billion to replenish the program, which the Small Business Administration is directing.
Now, scrutiny of the program has reached technology startups like Domio. While many of these young companies have been hurt by the pandemic, they are not ailing in the same way that traditional small businesses are. Many mom-and-pop enterprises, which tend to employ hourly workers and operate on razor-thin margins, are shutting down immediately because of economic pain or begging for donations via GoFundMe campaigns, but startups, which last year raised more than $130 billion in funding, have sometimes turned to the government loans not for day-to-day survival but simply to buy useful time. In Silicon Valley parlance, they want to extend their “runway,” or cash on hand, to a year or more. Many are backed by venture capital investors, who have accumulated record sums of capital — $121 billion as of the start of this year — that could be used to keep companies afloat.
It is exactly what I said above, and this is deviously evil!
The startup rush to tap the finite pool of government aid has stirred up a furious debate in Silicon Valley over whether these companies should have applied. “They are doing it because they can,” said Chris Olsen, a venture capitalist with Drive Capital Partners in Columbus, Ohio. “They view it as free money.”
(Blog editor is apoplectic)
Silicon Valley Bank, which serves startups and is one of the lenders offering the SBA loans, said that it had received 5,500 applications and that nearly two-thirds — more than than 3,600 — had been approved.
Most tech startups have fewer than 500 employees, making them eligible for the federal loans. They needed simply to certify that current “economic uncertainty” made the funds necessary to support their “ongoing operations.” The loans can be forgiven if used to cover payroll. The government has not shared a list of recipients.
Why not?
It's TAXPAYER MONEY, after all.
Would we get mad?
Maybe break lockdown and lynch those involved?
Justin Field, the senior vice president of government affairs at the National Venture Capital Association, a lobbying group, said startups were justified in seeking the federal aid. “These are potentially some of the most important companies for America’s future competitiveness,” he said.
Meanwhile, your "non-e$$ential" job is not important, nor is your livelihood or life to these $ick f**ks. I'm getting to the point where they can have this planet if this is what they are going to do it it. F**k them! I will see them in hell and feat on their disemboweled innards!!
Some startups said they saw how they had an advantage over traditional small businesses in obtaining the loans. While the application process has been difficult to navigate, many of the startups leaned on their relationships with banks, investors, law firms, and the lobbying group.
That $hit needs to $TOP NOW!
It's all WHO YOU KNOW, huh?
Just as we $u$pected. That's why the list won't be released.
WhereTF is Congre$$ when you really need them?
Jamie Baxter, chief executive of the staffing startup Qwick, said his finance chief worked overtime for two weeks figuring out the loan application process. Qwick, backed by $7 million in venture funding, received a loan for $500,000. It also cut staff by 70 percent and tapped its investors for an additional $1 million, Baxter said.
It's a BIG MONEY GRAB as this country becomes WORSE than the SOVIET UNION!
Field said it was up to individual firms to decide whether they could truthfully tell the government that they required help. “You have to certify need, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “How do you define need is a subjective question that you have to figure out.”
Yeah, they were truthful with them$elves!
--more--"
It's like I said. They want to preserve the things they will need going forward. F**k the rest of us.
So which $tartups in Bo$ton got $ome loot?
"Investors are making tough decisions on startups; IPO option has all but dried up amid pandemic, stock market volatility" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, April 27, 2020
For companies backed by venture capital and private equity, the pandemic has proven to be a particularly tough time to raise cash — even as many firms need a quick infusion of funds more than ever.
Not if you can " lean on relationships with banks, investors, law firms, and a lobbying group."
Investors have considered as an option the federal Paycheck Protection Program, the newly created small business assistance fund that reopened on Monday, but the rules preclude many companies in private equity portfolios (less so in VC) from applying. Meanwhile, the more traditional routes for raising money ― another round of private investments, or a jump into the public markets ― have suddenly become walled off.
A few local businesses managed to land a new round of funds, or have successfully gone public, amid the COVID-19 crisis, but they’re the exception that proves the rule.
Waltham cybersecurity company Randori, for example, said last week that it had raised $20 million in funding from three existing investors, and a new one, Harmony Partners. Chief executive Brian Hazzard said he and cofounder David “Moose” Wolpoff hadn’t expected to raise more capital this soon, but the pandemic hastened the timetable. The goal is to capitalize on a growing demand for cybersecurity, rather than slink into hibernation to ride out the storm. Hazzard said he expects to double the size of the 21-person company in a year, thanks to the new funds.
Paytronix, a loyalty platform provider for restaurants and convenience stores, also successfully turned to a previous financial backer for help after restaurant revenue slowed significantly. In the Newton firm’s case, it was Great Hill Partners to the rescue. The private equity operator helped lead the way for $10 million worth of funding, nearly all of it in equity, in a deal to be announced on Tuesday. Great Hill, which first invested in Paytronix in 2017, wanted to make sure the company could stay largely intact in the coming months. Paytronix chief executive Andrew Robbins said he did lay off about 10 people, but without a new investment, the cuts to his 175-person workforce would have been much greater.
Perhaps the toughest traditional route for a starving startup right now is the initial public offering, because of the stock market’s volatility and the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic’s length. Renaissance Capital, a pre-IPO research provider for institutional investors, reports that only three IPOs took place nationwide this month, with a fourth one, Watertown-based Lyra Therapeutics, scheduled to price on Thursday. All four are biotechs. Matthew Kennedy, a market strategist at Renaissance, said he expects the door to open somewhat to other kinds of firms later this spring, and he noted that startups choosing to merge into an existing publicly traded shell company, such as what Boston-based DraftKings did last week, have had more success during the pandemic.
Going public is a tricky proposition in these times. Startups no longer take their shows on the road for face-to-face meetings with investors; instead, they’re pitching via phone and video conference. That’s what happened to Imara, a 20-person biotech in Boston developing drugs to treat blood disorders. Imara raised $86.5 million in its IPO last month, to cover the costs of two global trials, but not before its physical roadshow turned virtual by the time of the IPO because of coronavirus concerns.
Few startups are this lucky anymore. Siobhan Dullea, chief executive at startup accelerator MassChallenge, said venture capital funding has all but seized up completely. Almost no one is taking even virtual meetings with startups, except for the VC firms that have already invested with them. Some are temporarily pivoting to pandemic-related work, but many others are going into hibernation.
Meanwhile, portfolio managers at VC and PE firms are busier than ever, trying to triage the firms where they have placed investments: Which companies should get more funding now, and which ones should not? John Ayer, partner at law firm Ropes & Gray, said investors want to protect their portfolio companies but are also reluctant to pump more capital into a business that’s likely to end up in bankruptcy now.
Greg Dracon, a general partner at .406 Ventures, said he has participated in more board meetings in the first four weeks of the pandemic than he has over any four-week period in his career. Some startups are told to trim their budgets. Some receive an extra infusion of cash. He said .406 decided to put more money into Randori because of the increasing need for cybersecurity, and its founders’ exceptional skill set.
It will be a time when winners get bigger, and losers fall by the wayside. Nixon Peabody corporate attorney Phil Taub said investors are often having to decide which firms they can let expire, and which ones they should keep going. The life-or-death decisions during this pandemic, it turns out, aren’t limited to the hospital rooms.
That's offensive.
--more--"
Related:
"While prescriptions for antidepressants have climbed in the U.S. in recent years, those for anxiety and insomnia have fallen, a new report shows — but the numbers also suggest the coronavirus pandemic could fuel a rise in the use of medications for all three conditions.
Every time you turn around, Pharma is benefitting from the plannedemic.
Meanwhile, behind the paywall was this:
Some of the medications -- including, for example, the anti anxiety drug Valium and the anti-insomnia drug Ambien -- can have potentially harmful side effects. "Our analysis signals the potential significant emotional impact of COVID-19 and is something we will continue to watch for the next several months, [and] until life and work get back up to normal, we expect that many Americans will continue to feel the stress that has come from the pandemic," said Glen Stettin, senior vice president and chief innovation officer at Express Scrips."
What if we never get back to "normal?"
Also see:
"The Supreme Court ruled Monday that insurance companies can collect $12 billion from the federal government to cover their losses in the early years of the health care law championed by President Barack Obama. Insurers are entitled to the money under a provision of the “Obamacare” health law that promised the companies a financial cushion for losses they might incur by selling coverage to people in the marketplaces created by the health care law, the justices said by an 8-1 vote. The program only lasted three years, but Congress inserted a provision in the Health and Human Services Department’s spending bills from 2015 to 2017 to limit payments under the “risk corridors” program. Both the Obama and Trump administrations had argued that the provision means the government has no obligation to pay. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her opinion for the court that the congressional action was not sufficient to repeal the government’s commitment to pay."
Everybody gets bailed out except you, American citizen, and $ome greedy entities aren't giving the money back:
"Some businesses won’t return funds despite pressure from Trump administration" by Jeanne Whalenand Aaron Gregg Washington Post, April 28, 2020
WASHINGTON — Several publicly traded companies say they are not planning to return loans received from a small-business rescue program, despite pressure from the Trump administration to repay the funds.
Basically flipping him the finger.
Companies in the hotel, cruise ship, and medical device sectors said they are qualified to receive the money under the Paycheck Protection Program and need the funds to stay in business.
What bu$ine$$?
Your industry has been destroyed by COVID-19.
Their resistance comes days after the Small Business Administration suggested dozens of publicly held companies should give back money received from the Paycheck Protection Program by May 7.
The agency said public companies with ‘‘substantial market value’’ and the ability to raise money through capital markets were not the intended recipients of the funds, which were meant to help small businesses keep employees battered by the novel coronavirus pandemic.
How did they get the money then?
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin increased the pressure Tuesday morning, saying the government plans to audit all loans over $2 million before it forgives them. The rules call for the government to forgive the loans if companies use them to keep employees on the payroll.
‘‘Anybody that took the money that shouldn’t have taken the money, one, it won’t be forgiven and two, they may be subject to criminal liability, which is a big deal,’’ Mnuchin said in an interview on Fox Business. ‘‘I encourage everybody to look at this and pay back these loans now so we can recycle the money if you made a mistake.’’
He made Harvard back down so anything is po$$ible.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the federal government plans to audit all loans over $2 million before it forgives them.MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
You better do what he $ays.
Meanwhile, banks trying to submit applications for thousands of small businesses seeking coronavirus relief loans in the second round of funding have hit a bottleneck for a second day at the SBA.
It beggars the question: is the incompetence intentional?
Banking industry groups said Tuesday the SBA’s loan processing system is still unable to handle the volume of loan applications from business owners trying to get aid under the Paychceck Protection Program, part of the government’s $2 trillion coronavirus aid package. The SBA has said the slowdown is due to its attempts to limit the amount of loans any bank can submit at one time, but some banks say they’re not able to get any applications into the system.
When he got there, the fund was dry.
Bank of America, for instance, sent 184,000 applications for rescue loans from Sunday to early Monday morning, according to Bloomberg News.
“Today is just another slow, frustrating slog for getting PPP loans through,” said Paul Merski, a vice president at the Independent Community Bankers of America.
That's when the Globe's printed paper went down.
Some public companies that received funding in the first round have returned the money after public criticism, including Shake Shack, Kura Sushi USA, and Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
Other companies are resisting doing the same. Lindblad Expeditions Holdings, which operates high-end cruises, said it met the criteria for applicants and plans to keep its $6.6 million loan. The company reported having about $137 million in cash as of March 31, shortly after drawing down on a $45 million line of credit. The coronavirus prompted the company to cancel its cruises on March 12, a move it called ‘‘financially devastating.’’ ‘‘Despite this circumstance, Lindblad is the very rare travel company that has not imposed any layoffs, furloughs, or salary reductions to date — because of our access to the PPP,’’ said the company, which employs 461 people in the United States.
For how long are they going to retain these employees, because we are never going back to the way it was before.
A group of hotel companies chaired by Monty Bennett, a Dallas executive and Republican donor, said it also planned to keep the funds. Ashford Hospitality Trust, Braemar Hotels & Resorts, and Ashford were among the biggest recipients of the loans, receiving them through multiple applications, according to federal filings. The companies said they applied for $126 million total. The loan payments to the companies have come under scrutiny, given Bennett’s political donations. Since the 2016 presidential campaign, Bennett has given more than $370,000 to support President Trump and the Republican National Committee, and has given to a slew of other GOP campaigns in the House and Senate, as well as their party committees....
--more--"
Better get some liability in$urance before reopening:
"Businesses seek sweeping shield from pandemic liability before they reopen" by Jim Tankersley and Charlie Savage New York Times, April 28, 2020
WASHINGTON — Business lobbyists and executives are pushing the Trump administration and Congress to shield US companies from a wide range of potential lawsuits related to reopening the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, opening a new legal and political fight over how the nation deals with the fallout from COVID-19.
Why not?
The vaccine companies already have immunity from law$uits. Why not go whole hog and complete the transition to pure fa$ci$m in the form of corporate totalitariani$m.
Government officials are beginning the slow process of lifting restrictions on economic activity in states and local areas across the country, but lobbyists say retailers, manufacturers, eateries, and other businesses will struggle to start back up if lawmakers do not place temporary limits on legal liability in areas including worker privacy, employment discrimination, and product manufacturing.
OMFG!
So much for being an "e$$ential" hero!
The biggest push, business groups say, is to give companies enhanced protection against lawsuits by customers or employees who contract the virus and accuse the business of being the source of the infection.
Has anyone ever sued for flu before?
WTF?
The effort highlights a core tension for as the economy begins to reopen: how to give businesses the confidence they need to restart operations amid swirling uncertainty over the virus and its effects, while also protecting workers and customers from unsafe practices that could raise the chances of infection.
Yeah, stripping you of your legal rights is protecting you!
FA$CI$M!
Administration officials have said they are examining how they could create some of those shields via regulation or executive order, but lobbyists and lawmakers agree the most effective changes would need to come from Congress — where the effort has run into partisan divisions that could complicate lawmakers’ ability to pass another stimulus package.
Republicans are pushing for the liability limitations as a way of stopping what they say are overzealous trial lawyers and giving business owners the certainty they need to reopen.
Kill all the lawyers.
Leaders of labor unions say limiting business liability will reward companies that are not taking adequate steps to ensure the safety of their workers and consumers.
You are lucky you have a job, so shaddup!
In announcing that the Senate will return May 4, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican from Kentucky, the majority leader, said Monday there was an “urgent need” to enact legislation to shield businesses from pandemic-related legal liability if they reopen, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat from California, rejected McConnell’s call. “I don’t think that at this time, with coronavirus, that there’s any interest in having any less protection for our workers,” she said Tuesday.
One wonders how much longer they will have a job.
--more--"
