How we'll know when the crisis is almost over ...

We’ll know because that’s when all the lawsuits will start. 

Every ambulance-chasing scheming shyster will sue to get a big settlement.  They’re already mapping out their plans and lining up clients, I’m sure.  I’ll also bet they’re scoping out venues to file in places and before judges known for” jackpot justice” because of their proclivity to deliver ridiculously outrageous settlements on the thinnest of legal grounds. 

Workers will sue employers for not adequately protecting them. There will be individual and class-action lawsuits against firms that make masks, gowns, gloves, wipes, disinfecting spray, hand sanitizer, whatever – either because someone used one or more of these and still got the virus, or they developed some other ailment while using these. Expect additional class-action lawsuits against anyone and everyone that treated anybody for COVID-19. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the states attorneys general suing various members of the Trump administration and Trump personally, as well as the U.S. government for damages from the outbreak. Someone will also try to sue China.  Democrats will resume impeachment hearings. 

But what will really have all the shysters and scammers drooling will be talk of Congress setting up a compensation fund for the victims of COVID-19. 

It won’t just be about those who contracted the virus, but also those impacted by it. Yet the big money will be focused on compensating the families of those who supposedly died from it.

There will be a push by members of Congress from both parties to set up this fund ASAP and pump billions into it. I suspect Representatives and Senators from both parties are already discussing this. I have no doubt they will propose something soon; the only real difference between the parties’ plans will be how much every family gets, and who gets it. 

No one will have the balls to stand up and question why we should be paying anything to the families of the dead, just because someone died from this particular disease.  To question it would be heartless – shouldn’t we as a nation help these families in their time of need?     

That said, I’m about to write something extremely unpopular.  However, it needs to be said.  And since I started this whole project to write about reality, I’ll do it. 

We should not be compensating any family of someone who died from COVID-19.  We don’t compensate family members of someone who dies from a heart attack, cancer or any other disease. There’s no justification for compensating families of people who die from this disease, either.  We can all be sorry for their loss, we can grieve with them, but we shouldn’t pay them. 

We set a terrible precedent under George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks.  At his direction, the government paid out compensation to the families of those who died that day. I said it was a terrible idea then, and I maintain it still is. 

As well-meaning he may have thought it at the time, it was not warranted.  In fact, it was a stupid decision that will haunt us for decades to come. 

It was one thing to compensate the families of first responders who died saving others such as those who perished on 9/11 or as a result of that. The families of members of our military who die in service to our country also should be compensated. 

But it’s quite another matter to pay families of people who died unfortunately by being in the wrong place at the wrong time – as in 9/11 – or by contracting a deadly disease now.  I don’t say that because I have no compassion for families that lose loved ones, but because it can’t be our collective responsibility to make everybody whole no matter what fate deals them.

Should we compensate families of people who die in car accidents? What about the families of those who commit suicide, die of as a result of a drug overdose, die after falling down their stairs at home, or simply die of natural causes?

Where do we draw the line? And we have to.  We can’t afford not to. 

Not only that, but we should stop the terrible precedent set by George W. Bush right now. Plus, we should remember how aggrieved and ungrateful so many were at the amount they received back then, and their incessant legal wrangling to get a bigger piece of the pie.

This was especially galling since by all rights they should have received zero.    

We should flatly refuse to be extorted by politicians playing on public sympathy to deliver an unjustified financial windfall to the families of those who may or may not have died from the virus.

I say may or may not because there’s new evidence that NYC officials in particular – and I suspect many other hard-hit cities – have padded their death toll from COVID-19. NYC officials started including additional deaths from other causes like heart attacks in their COVID-19 counts, even if the deceased exhibited no symptoms or was never tested, because (according to officials there) they “probably” were affected by the virus.

See a pattern emerging? It’s a race to claim more victims; more deaths mean more sympathy.  More sympathy means less resistance to compensating victims and their families.      

It will be difficult to push back on compensating victims and their families because the media will scream about how cruel we are to even consider turning our backs on them. Surely they deserve something for their loss?

No. Honestly, they don’t.  Yes, it was a deadly virus, much like the seasonal flu.  But we’ve never compensated the families of those who died from the seasonal flu in the past, or from other diseases and conditions that routinely kill many more Americans each year.    

We shouldn’t compensate these families now, either.

Welcome to the weasel wonderland (Part 3) ...

Today’s topic is on saving small businesses impacted by the lockdown. 

In a word, don’t.  Please stop.  Don’t do any more, for God’s sake.

Congress and the experts have done far too much damage already.  Everything they plan to do going forward is just going to make things much, much worse and squander billions needlessly. 

Here’s why: if the goal is to save laid off employees from going broke, we’ve already done that.  The cash payouts to every American, plus the ridiculously boosted unemployment comp, are putting more money in a lot of people’s pockets than they’ve seen when they were working. 

If the goal is to save small businesses from going broke that ship has sailed.  Not only that, but labor is usually the biggest expense for small businesses – if they’ve laid off their employees, they don’t have that expense anymore. That’s why, for the life of me, I cannot understand why the clowns in government and especially in Congress are so enamored of the Payroll Protection Plan designed to cover payroll expenses for small businesses.

Hello?  Those employees aren’t on the payroll anymore, are they? No, they were laid off and are now collecting unemployment comp.  And, BTW, doing better financially. 

So if you boil this down, the government wants to give loans to small businesses to cover their payroll during the lockdown and if they keep their employees on their payroll, even though they have no work for those employees and those employees aren’t allowed to come to their workplace anyway, the loan becomes an outright grant.

Have you spotted the logic problem? Why can’t Congress? Or Trump, for that matter?    

It's classic circular stupidity. Something you’d expect from Democrats, but no, Republicans are not only pushing this, too, but want to add another $250 billion to this boondoggle, because there’s been such a demand for the loans.  (The initial $350 billion is almost gone.)      

Of course, small businesses – and I use that term loosely as you’ll see – are fighting to get those loans and whining and bitching about how hard they are to obtain.

You see that on the news every night. Small businesses want to stay open and keep their employees, but the government and the banks are standing their way.  The heartless bastards.

Many banks are requiring “business” owners to prove they have a business to get a loan – like a tax ID or EIN.  Some banks are giving a higher priority for processing applications to customers with whom they already have a business-banking relationship.  How dare they …  

Oh the humanity. 

It’s so restrictive that Nancy Pelosi said recently that in the “next” coronavirus stimulus package she wants to loosen the rules so people with no business history, those not knowledgeable enough to complete an application, volunteer clinics, and nonprofits could also qualify for the loans without going through the full vetting process.  (Planned Parenthood is technically a nonprofit, BTW.)

The other day the WSJ had an article on the hold up in loans and one of the examples was a small business owner complaining how she spent the entire morning going from bank to bank and no one was willing to help her.  Her business?  She has a startup with 6-8 employees that helps other organizations make their websites more accessible for the disabled.   

As a lender what would give you pause?  It’s a startup? It’s not actually a real business?  Don’t those capabilities already exist – for free – in practically every major web browser?  Her startup is likely not producing an income yet, and probably isn’t planning to?

Geez, I don’t know. I wouldn’t lend money to her.  That’s just me. 

But she heard banks were giving out money. Why couldn’t she get some? 

That’s the attitude. And never let it be said that a bad idea can’t be made worse by politics. 

Democrats and Republicans are floating the idea for a program that would cover all payrolls – for people earning up to $100,000 a year – until the lockdown is ended, which, according to the supposed experts in DC, could last until 2023. 

I did not make that up. It’s in today’s WSJ. 

I have a much better and less costly set of ideas. 

First, end the lockdowns and let most healthy people go back to work. Reopen the schools.  At this point, some say from 20-50% of us already have been exposed and either not developed any symptoms or automatically recovered. It’s also clear that the virus isn’t as deadly for everyone.  People really at risk – those with underlying health issues – can be quarantined until there’s a real vaccine more easily than a whole freaking country.

In the meantime, everybody else can wear masks, keep up social distancing, wash their hands frequently, keep hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes handy and go about their daily lives. We’ve been doing it for a couple of  months already.  If someone then displays symptoms of the virus, put them in quarantine and test everybody around them. That’s not that hard.     

Next, stop the handouts. Period.  No more free anything.  No more bullshit giveaways to every scammer, wannabe do-gooder, whining governor, industry group, and corporate weasel with their grubby paws out.  More importantly, don’t print any more money to fund every elected or unelected government employee’s wet dream of as utopian society. Put in realistic sundown clauses, like cutting off funding in two months, in all the programs already passed.

If any Senator or Representative fights this, remember it when they come up for reelection and vote their ass out. Now that I think about it, vote them all out. All of them. They shouldn’t be in office, any of them, anymore, after this shameful and reprehensible episode.     

They’re the reason for all the new demands for additional bailouts and giveaways.  They are the reason why we’re already spending $2.2 trillion to pay people not to work. Why we are grossly overreacting to a “pandemic” that so far is less deadly than our normal seasonal flu.  Why we’re using this event to push bigger government and socialist programs we don’t need and can’t afford.  And why we are spending billions – yes billions – to fund favored businesses and other groups that have nothing to do with combatting the virus. And they’re dreaming up new ways to spend even more.   

They need to be stopped.   

In reality, we shouldn’t bail out anybody, especially not those we always seem to be bailing out – like the auto companies, the airlines, the banks – and this time most certainly not the cruise lines registered elsewhere to avoid our taxes. Bailing them out won’t save jobs – they’ve already laid off most of their employees already, and we’re giving those employees unemployment benefits. 

Every time we’ve bailed out some business or industry in the past they’ve just used our money to boost profits and enrich their top dogs.  Screw them. 

While we’re at it, there’s absolutely no need to save “small business”; the small businesses that were going to make it have been working through all this anyway, without government assistance.  The landscapers. The home remodelers.  The auto repair shops.  There are a lot of people out there who have been working, and a lot of people hiring and paying them. 

Today, for example, we had somebody install solar tubes in our house.  Our next door neighbor had granite countertops installed today.  Last week another neighbor had solar tubes put in.  Yet another neighbor has had a major construction project going on at their home for several months. Obviously, a lot of small businesses are still operating and paying their employees.   

Outside the cities featured every night on the news, the rest of the country has still been quietly working, unless some bureaucrat forced their employer to close.  Those of us outside those cities all know this. For some reason, nobody in DC seems to be aware of this.    

Truthfully, and coldly, a lot of small businesses aren’t worth saving; most have already cut all their employees, and sadly, most were already going to fail sooner or later with or without the pandemic.  Sure, we have heart for the woman who started a company with her mahjong group to make yarmulkes for dachshunds, or the guy who started a business with friends to breed exotic salamanders, but they’ll probably fail.   Giving them loans to prop them up now is like giving a ventilator to a 105-year-old, 3-pack-a-day smoker with emphysema and advanced heart disease just diagnosed with COVID-19 – it may make you feel good but it’s pointless.    

If we want to get the economy – and actually the country – back we need to stop the politicians and DC experts from making it any worse.

If only we could lockdown all of them for a month or two …

Welcome to the weasel wonderland (Part 2) ...

Recently I wrote about the insanity of the payouts to every American through the recent “stimulus” bill. These were sold to the public as essential to help those out of work because of the pandemic. But then it also turns out these will go as well to people still fully employed – including Federal, state and local government employees, to whom this is just an unwarranted windfall at taxpayer expense.

And nobody in the media covered this. I wonder why …     

These cash payments were also supposed help the economy and hard-hit businesses by putting a lot of extra spending money into the pockets of every American; money they could quickly spend giving an instant boost to an economy flat on its butt.  

Except for one important thing:  The reason these businesses are hard-hit is because they were ordered to close or severely curtail operations by the geniuses in DC and then laid off most of their employees as a result.  Big employers such as Disney, Universal, and other theme parks, as well as the cruise lines, airlines, restaurant and hotel chains, and many other retail and hospitality employers aren’t open. 

So there are not enough places and businesses at the moment that would normally suck up the extra spending money; certainly not enough that could suddenly employ enough people to make a significant difference. The extra cash sent out will probably be saved by most recipients.  

As infinitely dumb as all this is, it gets worse under the guise of helping the unemployed make ends meet before their jobs come back.  We are sweetening unemployment comp by as much as $600 a week on top of whatever their state provides, making it more attractive for some people to want to be unemployed, and less attractive to go back to work until those benefits run out. 

Which will keep the unemployment rate artificially high long after the jobs are back.  And which is precisely what we saw when we last extended unemployment benefits – a large number of recipients didn’t even bother to look for a job until their benefits were about to be cut.   

We’re also broadening who can collect unemployment. Now you won’t even need to have lost a real full-time job to collect benefits.  You can be a part-time worker. You can be a Lyft or Uber driver, or deliver for DoorDash, making a few extra bucks on the side.  You can be a self-employed dog walker or aromatherapy consultant, phrenologist.  Or whatever.  Think about that. 

In what world did some elected or appointed buffoon not see the insanity of this? Who did not see how a whole host of part-time and “self-employed” people and “gig” workers would game the system? Jesus, are the people in Congress really that stupid, that naïve?

I withdraw the question. It’s obvious.   

It’s probably more likely they just didn’t give a rat’s ass about preventing massive fraud because it would help them politically. 

Yes, in case you missed this, part-time workers, “freelancers,” others who claim to be “self-employed,” off-the-books contractors and landscapers, independent dog walkers, and Uber and Lyft drivers – essentially all the people who already didn’t have a full-time job to lose – are now eligible to collect unemployment. How’s that work again?  How does anyone calculate the wages they’ve lost from jobs they didn’t have?  Just take their word for it?  Sure, that makes sense. 

One way would be to require them to show tax returns for a recent year or so, or submit a simplified return, which is the current plan. That makes perfect sense. 

But Democrats in Congress and elsewhere are arguing that showing tax returns shouldn’t be a requirement because some seniors on SSI and some on disability aren’t required to file annual tax returns, so they don’t bother to file.    

Well so do a lot of off-the-books weasels and deadbeats who should be reporting their income and filing, but don’t.  There are also those who don’t work at all that will suddenly “remember” working for an imaginary “business” that failed, just to get unemployment benefits.  I think that’s who Democrats want to protect. 

Democrats aren’t interested in closing that gaping loophole; they want everyone, worthy or not, to get lots of free money. Mainly so they can take credit for it around the 2020 elections.    

I’ll wager the majority of these newly eligible people haven’t even filed returns for years, or if they did they grossly underreported income – which would significantly lower any unemployment comp they’d receive. Either way, they haven’t been paying their “fair share” of taxes. 

Where do you think the people in Optima Tax Relief commercials come from?  You know, the ones who say they owed the IRS thousands in back taxes for years? They’re just the ones who got caught. In addition to the usual deadbeats who “forgot” to pay taxes, there are millions more running off-the-books businesses – like catering, bookkeeping, decorating, or lawn services, for example – out of their homes and not reporting a dime of income to the IRS. 

If they provided a service to a regular business, they may have gotten a 1099 along the way, which alerts the IRS.  But not always.  If they do work for a residential customer or another sole proprietor, probably not. That’s one of the perks for them – they get to keep everything; Uncle Sam gets bupkis most of the time.  So now we are going to pay unemployment comp to people who usually don’t pay much if anything into it?

Believe it or not, that’s the plan. 

That’s why in a moment of karmic justice, it’s important to require them to show a tax return to collect anything. All these years they’ve skated and stayed below the radar. I know people like this – people with no discernable regular income who live quite well. Chances are you do, too. 

I also have first-hand experience with people collecting unemployment comp and continuing to earn a lot of money off the books on the side. I had to fire an employee one time, years ago, and he immediately filed and got unemployment comp, even though I fired him for cause. He used the income from unemployment to finance a new company he was starting.  Even after that new company was up and running, he continued to collect unemployment until his benefits ran out.

He didn’t need the extra money, but as long as he could get it, he would. 

Which is my point all along: nobody leaves free money on the table.  This new plan to help the unemployed could have been handled easily within current unemployment benefit qualification rules in place by each state. Although I believe it’s unnecessary, the $600 per week bump in benefits would have been okay for a little while, like a couple of months. 

But expanding who can qualify – and then fighting against any form of verification, like demanding a tax return to prove earnings – is simply ridiculous, wasteful, and an invitation to widespread fraud. And a lot of people will gladly accept that invitation.  

Next up: Saving businesses that aren’t really businesses.

Welcome to the weasel wonderland (Part 1) ...

I like to think the very best of people.

However, we’re about to enter a weasel wonderland.  Every grifter, hack, scammer, and moocher smells free money – lots and lots of it – and nobody, but nobody, is going to get in their way. It’s going to be a mad rush of various pigs racing to the trough.

That means much of the $2 trillion supposed to help those put out of work because of the coronavirus pandemic is going to be squandered on people who don’t deserve it and businesses that don’t warrant our financial support.  Count on it. 

Republicans and Democrats in Congress decided to just flood the economy with money. They didn’t really care who got the money, who deserved help, or whether this was even a smart idea.  Much less how to police the grab bag so people and businesses didn’t just rip us off. 

And you can depend on it:  we will get ripped off. The way the bailouts were structured they were intentionally designed for the American taxpayer to be ripped off. Seriously.  The drafters of this pile of crap on both sides of the aisle went out of their way to make sure it would be as easy as possible, as effortless as they could, to rip us all off. 

Let me just start on the primary flawed premise:  We need to put extra money in the pockets of all Americans.  That’s extra money in addition to boosted unemployment comp for those who lost their jobs.  Why?  Honestly, why? Nobody can answer that. 

Some say so people impacted by the pandemic can still pay their rent, their car payments, and buy food – you mean, in two short weeks a large portion of the country had run out of food, and blown through any money to cover rent and car payments due in another two weeks?  Equally dumb is when others say it’s to help the unemployed pay for childcare.  Huh? If you aren’t working and already home all day can’t you watch your own kids? 

Tell me who, specifically, this program is supposed to help. And why.  Nobody can, beyond the usual push back that most Americans live paycheck to paycheck already and couldn’t come up with $400 in an emergency – which is all complete bullshit. 

Okay, so for no apparent reason we’ll give every citizen $1200, plus $500 for each child (limit 2). That means a couple with two kids gets $3400 for doing absolutely nothing. Makes no difference if they live in East Jabip, Mississippi – where an extra $3400 is a lot of money – or in New York City, where that’s worth a lot less.    

I’m also betting it makes no difference if they are still working and getting paid from their job. 

Surprised? Nobody wants to talk about that, do they? 

Let that sink in for a moment. What’s the largest group of workers still employed?   

Do you think Federal employees lost their jobs because of the pandemic? Of course not. What about state and local government employees? Think they’ve been laid off? What about public-school teachers – they’ll still keep getting paid, as well as school administrators.

So will all the first responders, EMTs, police, firefighters, garbage collectors, nurses, hospital workers, etc.  Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be paid – health workers, especially – but  if the rationale for shot gunning out billions upon billions is to offset workers’ lost income, then why are we giving it to people who’ve not lost a dime of income?   

Face it: it’s a stupid and wasteful way to pad the pay of everybody who is already being paid, most with our tax dollars.  Democrats love it, Republicans love it; it makes both sides seem really generous and compassionate and “doing something” to bring back the economy. 

But here's the other big question about this scheme: you give people a lot of free money, but you’ve closed most of the businesses where they’d usually spend this windfall.  And because they can’t patronize those businesses, those firms laid off their employees. Great plan. 

How in God’s name is this helping the economy?

And what do you do as an encore? If you feed the squirrels, there will be more of them. If you take away parental responsibility to feed their own kids by having schools do it, the kids will now be wholly dependent on free meals at school to survive and parents won’t bother anymore; when schools shut down for holidays and breaks you still have to feed those kids or they won’t be fed at all. If you set a precedent of just handing out billions in free money to everyone every time there’s a crisis, where does that end, or can it ever be stopped? Plus, who decides when it's necessary?

Now, before you think I’m overreacting, think about this: Bernie Sanders and many Democrats have been promoting a $2000 a month payment to every American family for some time. It would be a minimum income for every family, forever. A floor, in other words. 

I can hear the argument now – you didn’t have any problem giving $3400 to everyone. We’re just proposing much less than that.  Oh, and BTW, we must extend this to all residents – not just citizens – in this country, or you’re a bigot and a racist. 

Wait for it. It’s coming.

Next up, I’ll discuss the new scam for unemployment benefits and corporate welfare.