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Priorities: Lots of Immunity to Work on Before Protecting Businesses from Coronavirus Lawsuits

Republicans in Washington want to give businesses immunity from lawsuits over coronavirus, blocking workers and customers from suing for infections they catch while working or shopping in arguably unsafe conditions.

If businesses get immunity from lawsuits over their failure to protect their customers…

  • Why can’t we give workers immunity from termination or wage deductions for choosing not to risk infection by reporting to unsafe workspaces?
  • Why can’t we give workers immunity from eviction when they can’t pay rent due to coronavirus?
  • Why can’t we give regular Americans immunity from having to pay surprise medical bills?
  • Why can’t we give all Americans immunity from the economic ravages of necessary coronavirus shutdowns by providing a steady Universal Basic Income?
  • And best of all, why can’t we claw back more hundreds of millions in coronavirus relief checks we’ve handed to big companies (and maybe the $50 million in Paycheck Protection Program cash we’ve handed to fossil-fuel peddlers) and contribute to the global effort to develop the vaccines we need to give us the immunity we really need from coronavirus itself?

24 Comments

  1. o

    Ooh, ooh, ooh, Mister Kotter, I have an answer: because the United States does not care about Americans as individuals; people have no intrinsic value.

  2. I read somewhere that one can build a perfectly serviceable guillotine for $1200.
    Tumbrels should be a bit cheaper.
    There’s no end to the availability of candidates.

  3. cibvet

    This is the republican chance to shield all companies from lawsuits and with the judges that are now in place, it will take 50 years to return back to a free republic.

  4. Donald Pay

    Cibvet,

    With Buckobear’s guillotine, assuming it works better than Trump’s testing program, we could “cut” that time down to 1 year if we purchase them in quantity. I award a no bid contract to Buckobear’s Head Rolling Services for 100 such devices.

  5. Debbo

    COVID-19 numbers in the USA are still climbing. The only thing “bent” is GOP minds.
    is.gd/uEwzuP

  6. Debbo

    The pandemic is especially hurting Latinx, women and the poor per a Wapo poll. It’s a GOP wet dream.

    This is a Wapo doc: is.gd/aSUjFz

  7. mike from iowa

    Wingnuts found time to pay a woman to falsely charge Doc Fauci with sexual; assault. (she recanted and spilled her guts)

    DOJ dropped charges against admittedly guilty Flynn.

    Barr reiterated the lie that Mueller report found no collusion.

    It isn’t like anyone is dying by the thousands or anything, is it?

  8. Debbo

    Congressional Democrats MUST stand up against this. If they don’t, November becomes a real toss up on all levels.

    If Democrats do stand tall in opposition to this crap, I can almost feel more votes rolling in. We will have proven ourselves to be the party of the people, while the GOP will have shown their true scummy we-hate-everybody-except-rich-old-white-men status.

  9. leslie

    Noem apologists stress the faustian “benefits” of her incestuous relationship w/ Trump, to the state. 37 year SD news veteran Wooster thinks questioning her motives is appropriate. This election can save us unless it is fixed. We are in deep trouble.

  10. Debbo

    But it’s those brown people, right Mike? So it’s okay. Or even poor white people can be sacrificed as long as Garbo Gut gets his cheap, greasy burgers.

  11. jerry

    When the white folks who work in the small town nursing homes start infecting the white grandma’s and grandpa’s there and then dying themselves, we will see the horror of all of this. We cannot blame China for our unpreparedness, we will look to the leaders of this disaster and want revenge. At that point NOem can stick that $1.25 BILLION up where the sun don’t shine. NOem will go down in state history as the republican who could not lead because of her sheer ignorance and corrupted ways. NOem will always be shamed as a one term republican governor, the one who broke the streak.

  12. jerry

    mfi, here is this fraud that is coming your way to Iowa. Turns out the white house is now infected with the Covid19, so much so they had to rearrange the seating on Pence’s plane. Do you think they will now start wearing masks?

    “A member of United States Vice President Mike Pence’s staff has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, briefly delaying his Friday flight to Iowa and prompting some fellow passengers on Air Force Two to disembark, according to a White House official.

    Pence’s flight was delayed more than an hour on Friday morning and, according to press pool reports, passengers who were Pence staff members appeared to disembark before departure. It was not immediately clear whether the infected staffer had been aboard Air Force Two on Friday morning.”

    Pence probably brought it home with him from Mayo. There really is irony. Wonder if Mother Pence got a dose of it as well.

  13. jerry

    Covid 19 has been here since November, amazing. This train wreck will be with us for a long long time. Bloomberg reports, bats and cats are the carriers. So don’t get all kissy face with your cat…you know who you are.

    “Covid-19 cases in France can be dated back to as early as November 16, nearly 10 weeks before the country’s first confirmed cases of the disease were thought to have occurred, according to a French hospital.
    The November case was identified by the hospital’s medical imaging department after carrying out a retrospective study on about 2,500 chest scans performed between November 1 and April 30.
    The findings came as the World Health Organisation (WHO) called on countries to investigate pneumonia-like cases from late last year to get a clearer picture of how the new disease spread.
    Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO expert in animal diseases, said at a press briefing on Friday that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 originates or spreads in bats and can spread among cats, although it remains unclear which animal may have transmitted the disease to humans, Bloomberg reported.”

    We gotta get more tests, simple as that.

  14. Debbo

    And here’s yet another one, Nebraska GOP Gov. Pete Ricketts of the TD Ameritrade family. He’s letting the various meat processing plants go and we know the result:

    “Under pressure to keep the food supply chain flowing, some of the plant’s 3,500 workers, many hailing from Latin America, Somalia and Sudan, said they were told to report for work regardless. In a letter to the governor last week, Nebraska Appleseed, a nonprofit advocacy group, said a JBS worker had been told by his supervisor that if he tested positive, he should come to work anyway and ‘keep it on the DL’ or he’d be fired. Some workers who’d been told to quarantine after being exposed told ProPublica this week that they were called back to work before the 14-day window recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — even if they felt sick. One worker in the offal, or entrails, section recently fainted in the plant, they said, but was told he couldn’t go home.”
    is.gd/TRKvyM

    Sludge sinks to the bottom.

  15. Debbo

    More sludge sinking to the bottom.

    This time it’s the GOP’s chief justice of the Wisconsin supreme court, Patience Roggensack, talking about why the outbreak at a JBS plant isn’t serious.

    “These were due to the meatpacking, though,” she said. “That’s where Brown County got the flare. It wasn’t just the regular folks in Brown County.”
    is.gd/y0eI7J

  16. Debbo

    On the topic of meat, here’s a bit of good news:

    “In a letter to United States Attorney General William Barr, Ellison, along with attorney generals from 10 other states, called for an investigation into market manipulation in the cattle industry amid the COVID-19 pandemic.”
    is.gd/NHZ6AU

    Of course disBarr won’t do anything about it. He’s probably in on the take.

    Sludge sinks to the bottom.

  17. jerry

    Democrats should step up and demand better housing conditions for those plant workers who NOem and the rest of the republican governors , say live in squalid cramped conditions. They say it’s not the plants that cause the virus it’s the way the workers live. Here is that opening boys and girls, take it.

  18. leslie

    jerry you must move out-of-state and admit your military status so conservative idiots can attack you, slugger! Way to hit, Sir!

  19. leslie

    “status-is a fraud”

  20. mike from iowa

    Here is a priority of wingnuts they discovered after denying Merrick Garland a ghearing or an up, or down vote for the Supreme Court. From former Senate Number 2 liar John Cornpone of Texas…

    “If you thought the Kavanaugh hearing was contentious this would probably be that on steroids,” explained Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). “Nevertheless, if the president makes a nomination then it’s our responsibility to take it up.”

    Wingnuts have a vastly escalated plan to vote a third justice to the court if Ginsberg retires before the election. 71k deaths and they are planning to seat another unqualified, young, wingnut ideologue to the highest court in the land. Look at then present unemployment rate. Getting ideologues work one at a time will not help- present workers and likely, because of wingnut litmus tests for the lifetime jobs, harm even more workers. I hate wingnuts!

    ..

  21. jerry

    Rapid City sent out a request for 60,000 homemade masks to be donated to healthcare workers and first responders. Of course these are donated but cost money for the material. Here is this company in Texas that trump and his crooks ignored that can make N95 masks for $.79 each. You heard that right. Here is the story from Washington Post. If NOem was not so corrupt, she could buy those, American made masks for our state’s healthcare providers and the rest of our citizens

    “It was Jan. 22, a day after the first case of covid-19 was detected in the United States, and orders were pouring into Michael Bowen’s company outside Fort Worth, some from as far away as Hong Kong.

    Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week. He viewed the shrinking domestic production of medical masks as a national security issue, though, and he wanted to give the federal government first dibs.

    “We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.” Washington Post 5.9.2020

    Sad to believe that we instead made a deal for $5.50 each mask. trumpian republicans would steal from the sick and especially the dead for their own profits. Winning

  22. Debbo

    Jerry, your link is another testament to why the Liar-in-Chief deministration should be held criminally culpable in every COVID-19 death. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

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