Good illustration of what Trump means by “the economy.” He means Wall Street, owners and employers. They should continue to work and profit, but employees, suppliers, and the shopping public be damned.

Trump refuses to impose workplace safety – and public health – rules, which lobbyists such as his current Sec’y of Labor, Eugene Scalia, have successfully fought for decades. But he would extend immunity from liability for running a business – liberating it – in a way that fails to use reasonable methods to limit the spread of disease such as Covid-19. That is the definition moral hazard. It would directly harm workers, consumers and suppliers (whose staff are often directly responsible for restocking inventory), in order to reward business owners.

Stealing from workers to pad bidness profits is an old game. But Trump’s proposal would give it a deadly new twist. Moreover, his legion of new adolescent FedSoc judges would be likely to bless it as they rush to institute a new Lochner Era. Avoiding liability for intentionally bad or reckless conduct must also be a perennial wet dream for the aging Trump, whose idea of good judgment is to swallow bleach to fight an infection.

The stupidity behind this is the belief that the workers are all replacable cogs in a machine, instead of highly skilled employees.

The ag economy is loaded with jobs from fruit picking to fish fileting where the supply system breaks down if a fairly small number of people who have niche skills can’t work. You can’t just hammer new people into place to replace the sick or the unwilling.

If you are a sailor, go to quarantine, if you are a worker get fired with no benefits. I can imagine the AG coming down on any boycotts.
Throw 58 million small business owners under the bus but meat producers and packers … Hog prices have moved from 72 in March to 35 April 14 to over 60 to 55. Live cattle from 120 to 85..

Related issue, major finding: Montco PA tested all inmates and staff at the county jail within a 48-hour time period: _over 96% of positives were asymptomatic at the time of testing_. (Also they had released ~ 600+ inmates prior to this, IIRC from elsewhere).

Thread with some graphics:

Jeremy Roebuck: “Montgomery County’s jail tested every inmate for COVID-19 — and found 30 times more cases than previously known. What does that suggest for other corrections facilities in region? w/ @AESteele via @phillyinquirer [article link]”

…

“That many asymptomatic cases raises serious questions about how effective contact tracing can be implemented among the general population when the testing of asymptomatic people in Philly area is next to non-existent, public health experts say.…”
https://twitter.com/jeremyrroebuck/status/1255263885529174018

More (including known cases/projections based on this finding for other Phila area jails/prison):

Montgomery County’s jail tested every inmate for COVID-19 — and found 30 times more cases than previously known
https://www.inquirer.com/news/coronavirus-testing-montgomery-county-jail-asymptomatic-philadelphia-prisons-20200428.html

Analysis of how much contact tracing could help if only those testing positive similar to today could be traced. https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1254575445229441024
18.4 percent of inmates positive on the way to Marion Ohio type levels compares to 8 percent positive in ages 20 to 49 in cruise ship data from February.
20 to 39 year olds are 1.9 percent of fatalities in NY state. 323 deaths to date. In NYC 0 to 17 are about 2.1 percent of those positive, and 18 to 44 are 53,941 of 146,139 positive as of April 23.
Seattle Flu study has been doing self selected testing from March 23 to April 9 and found only 2 positives of 1392 samples who reported no Covid like symptoms and 44 from 2700 reporting symptoms.
https://publichealthinsider.com/2020/04/17/greater-seattle-coronavirus-assessment-network-scan-releases-data-from-first-18-days-of-testing/

It doesn’t matter how many workers die. Trump and his gang simply don’t care. Its all about his friends/political financiers continuing to make money. now given how unpleasant he has been towards China you do have to wonder why he would want to ensure a Chinese owned corporation was open and placing American workers in harm’s way. Perhaps its more about the money he owes the Chinese bank.

It is staggering how many Americans are dying from the virus and Trump treats it like its no big deal. He tries to force workers back to work without protection. Perhaps Trump will be the first America president tried by the Court of the Hague for Crimes against Humanity. Might be something the Union ought to pursue

As to those who voted for trump, they can learn to live with it or die because of it. Trump, Pence, Moscow Mitch, etc. are no better than any other murderers. Trying to force workers to go some where they will have a good chance of catching a disease that will kill them is beyond the pale of things. They complain about China and its brutal dictatorship, well in my opinion the trump organization is no better Reminds me of Union history when mine workers were forced to go to work in mines which would cave in or explode. Not much has changed in the u.s.a. it is fast becoming a failed state with a murderer leading it. One could conclude he is set out to destroy the U.S.A. and everything it stood for. Putin couldn’t do a better job if he tried

As Rachel Maddow says, “Watch what they do, not what they say.” So Mike Pence, head of the Coronavirus Task Force, pays a visit to the Mayo Clinic yesterday and decides to ignore the hospital’s policy and be the only one not wearing a mask, thus sending the message that “real men don’t wear masks.” Also underlining his master’s position that we’re over the hump of this thing and despite nearly 60,000 dead Americans the virus really isn’t that dangerous.

Some context about Trump’s claim that he wants workplace safety protections in his E.O., commanding that meat processing plants stay open. A pandemic aside, summer barbecues and an election are coming, and people forced to stay at home want their fridges full of meat to feel safe.

Meat production in America is a ruthless, just-in-time factory process. Margins and deadlines are tight, and Mother Nature won’t wait. Delays cause massive problems. There’s no safe place to put the shit from factory farms, let alone a way to economically dispose of millions of unprocessed carcasses. Restarting production is slow and expensive. Industry contracts put most of the business risk on farmer-suppliers. Systemic disruption would lead to thousands of them entering bankruptcy, which the GOP doesn’t want to read about in an election year.

A key player in setting policy about all this is Trump’s Secretary of Labor, Eugene Scalia. Son of the late conservative Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, Eugene is a lobbyist and labor law partner at a white shoe law firm in DC. He frequently walks through DC’s revolving door, helping Republican administrations keep their patrons happy. When working for BushCheney, Scalia personally axed proposed workplace ergonomics rules, which had been painfully worked out over a long period. Ergonomics studies the human health consequences of where and how people work. A particular focus is the effect of repetitive motion, whether typing on a keyboard or gutting hundreds of fish an hour.

The rules Scalia axed would have required employers to adopt workplace safety rules. For meat, fish, and poultry slaughterhouses, that would have meant slower production lines. (They far exceed speeds permitted in Europe.) Businesses like Tyson Foods argued the rules would have cut profits. Labor argued they were necessary to cut the vast numbers of dangerous accidents and permanent injury. Profits won. Eugene Scalia is the last man who would credibly prioritize workplace safety over extracting profit from physical labor.

Trmp et alia are using the Defense Production Act to “nationalize” businesses for his cronies and exempt them from any liability. They have been making big $$$$$ on PPE by having FEMA confiscate supplies and deliver them to distributors whom, I am sure, are providing kickbacks to Trmp et alia.

Trmp’s modus operandi has always been a Mafia bust-out on a national scale:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeK9e07Y65o