Lovely ideas, these people get

NEW: White House looking at using leftover/unspent FEMA funds to pay unemployment benefits unilaterally, 2 ppl familiar say

No final decision made/things are in flux

Experts question how WH can legally pay UI benefits w/o Congress@ericawerner @karoun https://t.co/q341avJbu4

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) August 7, 2020

But isn't that for... yep...

Believed to be tens of billions in hurricane relief money that has not been spent. Unclear if $ for Puerto Rico would be in the mix. White House has asked federal agencies to come up with lists of $ that could potentially be moved around for the executive orders

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) August 7, 2020

Couldn't have picked a better time too.

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said there could be up to 25 storms which have sustained winds of 39mph or greater. Storms which hit this threshold are named by the agency.

In a normal year, there are usually two storms before August which are named.

This year, there have already been nine named storms, a record which makes 2020’s hurricane season one of the busiest on record in the US.

It's going great, guys

Decisions

There are things some of us have the power to choose.

Gov. John Bel Edwards is requiring unemployed workers once again to apply for jobs each week as a condition for receiving jobless benefits – at a time when almost 1 in every 4 workers in Louisiana is collecting unemployment pay.

The governor’s decision comes just days after some 450,000 out-of-work residents in Louisiana lost their eligibility to receive a $600 weekly supplemental payment from the federal government that expired on July 31.

Of course we argue slapping the work search requirement back on is just insult added to the injury of having the $600 expire. But why do that when we can choose not to?

Craptacular August is here

Well, they did it.  They let the unemployment benefits extension expire.  I know a few weeks ago I wrote that they will definitely do that. But, like most people who also do not know the future, I thought probably there would be a last minute extension just before we all fell over the cliff.  Anyway, we fell over the cliff. So now the task is to climb up out of the ravine. But nobody seems to know how to do that.

Washington (CNN) The US economy, plagued by a resurgent pandemic, is showing signs of sliding backwards. Key deadlines on extending a federal eviction moratorium and federal unemployment benefits have come and gone. Yet lawmakers and the White House, sources say, are as far apart as they've ever been in talks on the next emergency aid package.

As one person involved told CNN on Sunday night: "No clue how we get this done at this point. Just so much outstanding."

Because we do not find it useful to despair, we at least try to find ways to explain how this can be so.  The easy answer is that our elected leadership exists in such an elite and isolated sphere of the upper class that it is profoundly disconnected from the needs of the vast majority of the people need. That has been true for long while, though. But even so, until now, there has existed at least a slight incentive to pander.  When things are getting really bad, especially with an election right around the corner, there would be some pressure to give people something, even if it's just a little something.

That's become less true over time.  The change hasn't been sudden. It's been a process of learning just how far they can push things. How much suffering can people endure through ruling class indifference? The 21st Century to this point has been one great exercise in finding out.  They've learned they can get away with leveling whole countries and committing unspeakable atrocities on the people there without ever having to answer for any of it.  They've learned that they can leave a city to drown for weeks after a hurricane while spreading lies about the victims' behavior and situation meant to imply they deserve what's happened to them. They've learned that the whole financial system can melt down triggering millions of home foreclosures and evictions and all that has to happen is some "too big to fail" banks need to be bailed out while everyone else is left to suffer.

So our unaccountable authoritarian state for and by the wealth holding classes has been learning to crawl and then to walk for a while.  And now we are going to see if it can stomp all over everybody as the pandemic-depression begins to hit people full force.  On Friday, the New Orleans Renters' Rights Assembly mustered a protest to stand in the way of  landlords stomping into eviction court.  They can't do that every day.   Unless and until congress makes a move to extend aid to people now, we're in for an especially rough end to 2020. And that rough end begins with August.

It's going great

Everybody fired. Everybody being more than previously reported.

Recent news analyses have sketched out a dire picture of the scope of the jobless crisis in Louisiana and the extent of the expected damage that the state’s economy as the federal boost to unemployment benefits lapses.

But the true picture is actually worse than some of those reports have outlined. For instance, a Sunday story in The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate noted that more than 313,000 laid-off Louisianans had filed for state unemployment benefits as of July 18, the most recent data for which the state provided complete data. But that figure didn’t include the thousands of freelancers, independent contractors and so-called “gig” workers thrown out of jobs by the coronavirus crisis.

That latter group includes more than 152,000 out-of-work Louisianans who, although not normally covered by the unemployment insurance system, have been able to file for jobless benefits under a special federal expansion of the program to address the massive job losses during the pandemic.

Oh boy.  That's just Louisiana, of course. But this story cites a Brookings report that says New Orleans will be the third "hardest hit" metro in the country by the looming benefits expiration. On the other hand, the rest of the country is... well, it's not going so great there either. 

The number of Americans filing new claims for state unemployment benefits totaled 1.43 million last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

It was the 19th straight week that the tally exceeded one million, an unheard-of figure before the coronavirus pandemic. And it was the second weekly increase in a row after nearly four months of declines, a sign of how the rebound in cases has undercut the economy’s nascent recovery. Claims for the previous week totaled 1.42 million.

For those of you who are among the ever-dwindling number of still employed persons, let's try an exercise.  Please raise your hand if you have been obligated out of fear or lack of options to keep going in to work during the pandemic while becoming more frightened and demoralized with news of each death or of the rate of spread.

Okay well if your hand is up, Mitch McConnell says your boss should sue you now. 

The most obnoxious provision of the GOP proposal is one that shifts the liability in COVID cases from the employer to employee. This provision allows employers to sue employees or their representatives for bringing a claim for a COVID infection and offering to settle out of court.

Most specifically, the measure mentions "demand letters." These are communications to a prospective defendant setting forth the facts of the claim, evidence assembled by the plaintiff, a reckoning of the potential damages and a statement of how much the plaintiff would accept to make the case go away. Here's a sample letter published by the San Francisco law firm Rouda Feder Tietjen & McGuinn.

These documents are often designed as an opening brief in a negotiation; since neither side in an injury case really wants to go to trial, they make sense. The GOP bill would make anyone offering to settle, either through a demand letter or otherwise, liable to be sued for damages if the case they're making is "meritless." That's another term that's undefined in the measure.

Unlike the limitation on damages elsewhere in the bill, by the way, the punitive damages that can be awarded to employers bringing these lawsuits aren't capped.

The measure also gives the attorney general the right to bring his own lawsuit in such cases. As a result, Kennerly observes, Atty. Gen. William Barr would get the right "to sue unions, labor activists, lawyers, doctors — everyone involved in coronavirus claims."

Congress is choosing to send millions of people off of a cliff right now because 1) Republicans are openly hostile to everyone except the bosses and millionaires and 2) Democrats are running an election campaign based on the hope that they can get away doing nothing if everyone is miserable enough, because they just might blame the Republicans for it.

The first of the month is coming. (There's one every month!) But this time we're going in while deliberately cutting off everyone's income. Also the federal evictions moratorium is expiring and the courts are open.. or are they?

In-corona-herence

Political leadership: The virus is spreading! Everybody needs to stop going out and getting into big crowds and line-ups and stuff in public. Stay inside! Preferably under something.  Don't make us have to take away your go-cups. Okay well, see, we are taking away your co-cups now.


Also political leadership:  What's the matter with you people? Don't you know you're supposed to get out and go to work in our groceries and classrooms and places where people get into big crowds and line-ups and stuff in public? If you're going to just sit at home, don't expect us to help you.

Many Republicans detest the supplemental jobless aid, put in place by the $2.2 trillion stimulus law, arguing that it is a disincentive to returning to work because it exceeds what some workers can earn in regular wages. The Republican proposal, which has badly divided the party, envisions eventually shifting to a new system of calculating benefits that would cap payments at about 70 percent of a worker’s prior income, which would also amount to about $200 per week.

Too much world burning down at once

Sorry this space has been a bit sparse as of late. I took the whole weekend to just try and catch up on various projects and got zero of them accomplished. I'll get it all straight soon. I think. I did prove that a person can get drunk on a Saturday night despite there being zero bars in operation so that's something, at least.

Seems like a useful skill to have in the coming weeks when all hell really starts to break loose.

Kudlow, appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," said the 70% wage-replacement formula would be "quite generous by any standard."

But Pelosi predicted that the need for an individual calculation of benefits for each jobless recipient would quickly gum up states' unemployment systems, already groaning under the weight of 20 million to 30 million jobless claims. In many states, including California, workers have waited weeks to start receiving benefits.

"The reason we had $600 was its simplicity," Pelosi said. "So why don't we just keep it simple?"

They don't want to "keep it simple," though.  The bosses are trying to win the pandemic.  The more thoroughly they can destroy any sense of security in what's left of the social safety net, the bigger the win for them.

The whole point is to keep as many workers as desperate as possible. Without a true system of public benefits to rely on, workers are at the mercy of the boss for whatever wages and terms of employment there are to be had. And when there are none, they have nowhere to turn for aid except to... "philanthropy" outlets under the private management of the same class of bosses they're already begging from.  Is it really any surprise to find such offerings inadequate to the need?

"We have been leaning in to raise the money and get it out the door as quickly as we can," Greater New Orleans Foundation CEO Andy Kopplin said. "But it’s impossible for philanthropy to close the massive gap that would come from the expiration of federal unemployment assistance."

The philanthropic group has raised more than $3 million for low-income families and the nonprofits who serve them since the pandemic began, but Kopplin said that's a drop in the bucket compared to the need.

Of course it's a drop in the bucket. That's the whole point. There is no one coming to help. We're just supposed to get used to it.

That and the evictions. August is always the shittiest month of any year. This one is gonna be one for the record books.

Can you "get used to it" on $400 a month?

Whatever they come up with will be worse than the deliberately difficult situation they are currently subjecting people to.  But how much worse? This much?

Republicans are considering extending the enhanced unemployment insurance benefit at a dramatically reduced level of $400 per month, or $100 a week, through the rest of the year, sources told CNBC.

There's no technical reason it has to be worse. Technically the Fed could "mint the coin" and let us pay everybody $2,000 a month until the pandemic abates. But we don't want to do that. We'd much prefer to hurt people just because they need help.

No end in sight

It's going great

“I have never seen infection in which you have such a broad range literally no symptoms at all in a substantial proportion of the population to some who get ill with minor symptoms to some who get ill enough to be in bed for weeks,” he said. “Others get hospitalized, require oxygen, intensive care, ventilation and death. The involvement with the same pathogen is very unique.”

Fauci said officials have to do better in containing the virus as states attempt to reopen. On Tuesday, he said state officials should adopt mask mandates and close bars. He said Wednesday that U.S. health officials do not see “an end in sight” to the pandemic.

“We are certainly not at the end of the game” of the pandemic, Fauci said. “Certainly we are not winning the game right now. We are not beating it.”

If we're going to be here a while we could choose to use this time to devise better ways of taking care of each other and protecting the most vulnerable.  OR we can just tell everyone to "get used to it."  Can we just get used to a more dangerous and unstable life where work is scarce and government support services are basically non-existent?  It sure looks like that is what we're trying to find out.

Louisiana in 1993 paid off the $1.3 billion it borrowed in 1987. Two years later, in a plan crafted by Richardson with business and labor leaders, the Legislature put the trust fund on solid footing -- until now -- by establishing the tax that businesses would pay and the amount that the unemployed would receive.

The plan included a trigger that would raise the business tax and lower the benefit payment if the trust fund went below $750 million.

Richardson said the trigger, with a delay, will take effect in January, with businesses paying about 10% more in taxes and the unemployed receiving about 10% less in benefits.

They rigged it to self-destruct during an emergency. Whatever scheme they replace it with will likely be worse. Congressional Republicans are arguing right now over how much worse it should be. As we've seen many times before, though, it can get pretty bad.  Benefits can be slashed, unions can be broken, scores of services people rely on can be eliminated or privatized. Everything is on the table when these situations arise. And they do seem to arise with greater and greater frequency.

.@nhannahjones: "I'm very worried. Some of the data I've seen show that Black kids are going to lose the most."

She compares the situation to New Orleans after Katrina or Puerto Rico after Maria and cautions that there are some that will take advantage to push privatization.

— Meghan Mangrum (@memangrum) July 22, 2020

They will definitley do this

Even if they find later that they can't get away with it entirely, congress is definitely willing to try letting unemployment benefits lapse. Just to see what happens if for no other reason.

Congress returned from recess this week to consider a new relief package, which could include at least a partial extension of the extra unemployment benefits. Senate Republicans and the White House are considering a roughly $1 trillion package that would retain the program but scale it back. Democrats are pressing to continue paying the full $600 a week.

But Congress seems unlikely to act before benefits lapse. And because of the antiquated computer systems in many state unemployment offices, which do the processing, it could take weeks to restart payments. That means that millions are likely to see their income drop at least temporarily.

If something gets thrown together later to replace the $600 a week, it will certainly be less.  Neither party can be held accountable.  It's just another round of Republicans accusing the American worker of being a lazy freeloader and Democrats apologizing for it while tacitly agreeing. This is the most natural set of motions our national body politic can make. It reaffirms everything we already know and expect of ourselves.

There are few things more central to the American political creed than the belief that people are poor because they are losers or unemployed because they don't want to work. It's more deeply embedded now than it's ever been.   There is no crisis or calamity that can shake us of that notion.  Individual Americans will suffer tremendous personal deprivation just to demonstrate their own commitment to "self-sufficiency." Likely the isolation and paranoia brought on by the pandemic has only exacerbated this quality. People are much more afraid of losing their job ... of "failing at life" than they are of dying of a disease.  This is incredibly easy for an elite political class to exploit. They're about to do just that with this next shock.  

Maybe at the end of this round, there will still be unemployment checks.  They won't be as much. And we will pay for them either with cuts to our retirement, or by sacrificing basic worker safety protections to some legal immunity scheme. In any case, we're going to be worse off. The bosses won the pandemic. This is how they reap the spoils now.  And once they see how much they get from this pass, they'll be back again for more.

Here comes the benefits cliff

Full speed ahead into the abyss, I guess.

Hundreds of thousands of Louisianans who’ve lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic have continued to receive sizable weekly checks, thanks to a federal $600-a-week boost to the state’s unemployment benefits.

But with the extra aid set to vanish in two and a half weeks — dropping the state’s maximum unemployment insurance benefit from $847 per week to just $247 — scores of workers are bracing for a huge blow to their income and stressing over how to pay bills.

Not sure about that "sizable" bit.  Maybe not the best way to describe the precarity to which these hundreds of thousands of workers in Louisiana have been subjected.  $600 a month with a hard expiration date doesn't sound like anyone's getting any special favors. They got mad at me for pointing this out yesterday but the way we talk about these policies in the media matters.  Working class people are being utterly abused by a saftety-net-in-name-only that is specifically designed to humiliate and intimidate them. It's important to avoid the pretense that they should be grateful for that.  Last month, the Advocate referred to the expanded benefits as "generous." We'll be sure and send Mitch McConnell a thank you card. 

Maybe we are picking at nits. But, as yesterday's story goes on to point out, Republicans in Washington, who are dragging their feet about extending benefits, are explicitly arguing that millions of laid off Americans have it too good right now. 

So far, there’s been little progress in Washington D.C. on a new aid package. Serious talks have yet to begin between the Democrat-controlled House and GOP Senate over possible proposals, and it’s unclear whether Republicans would support another round of expanded unemployment benefits.

Many Republicans have criticized the federal supplement, saying it is too generous and has incentivized many workers to stay home instead of returning to their jobs, since many lower-wage Americans have ended up making more each week than they earned while working full time.

We still don't even know if Congress will approve a new round of one-time relief checks like the ones sent out to many Americans a few months ago.  Back in May, when Sen. John Kennedy was asked about a second stimulus, he told us "People in Hell want ice water."  Well, John, we are in Hell. I mean, people in the Arctic want ice water right now.  And still, whatever relief Americans get looks right now like it will be less than the already insufficient previous round of checks.

Anyway if Republicans really thought the problem with this tenuous allowance is that it is too generous to compete with what people were making at work, then maybe it's time to talk about why more than 30 million Americans currently claiming benefits haven't been afforded a living wage. Of course they don't care about that. It's central to the right wing project that we maintain a large pool of unemployed or underemployed workers who are insecure enough to work for practically nothing when needed. If there's no one holding enough power to force the US Congress toward a different policy then this is fine for them. They are there to protect the bosses. Right now the bosses are winning. There's almost no incentive for anyone on their side to budge.

Up until this this week, I had all but convinced myself maybe there would be just enough fear of the fall elections to get a last minute extension of benefits through.  But I'm starting to see how a second stimulus check might provide just enough political cover to let the UI benefits expire anyway. Forcing people to "just get used to" worsening conditions is too high on the Republican list of priorities. They're not going to just let an opportunity like this pass without a fight.