Not content to sign their names in history books as having mismanaged a mere disaster, Republican ”leaders” all over the country are looking for unsuspecting observers to hold their beer while they show us how to turn a disaster into a catastrophe. Yes, to this point we have been doing Covid wrong. Yes it is an historical calamity of incalculable proportions. But come on, they can do better! We’re ‘Murica, dammit! They don’t just merely not respond to a pandemic in this country.
First a history lesson:
Republicans have spent decades trying to resuscitate Reaganism, to the point where one Onion parody joked about GOP leaders trying to reanimate the former president and run a zombie version of him for president. Only it’s no laughing matter, because forty years after Reagan first took office, Republican politicians and business lobbyists have resurrected a spectral version of his ideology.
They have exhumed the Gipper’s incendiary “welfare queen” language, alleging that employers today are being oppressed by lazy unemployment beneficiaries who are harming America by refusing to get off their ass and get back to work during a historic, deadly pandemic.
Then proving the the definition of the word “hypocrisy” is foreign to them, they take legislative steps to make the Covid situation horrifying! It is how they celebrate Halloween. Trick or Trick!
On Thursday, the governor called for a special session of the Florida Legislature to push back against President Joe Biden's new vaccine mandates, which require most federal employees and contractors as well as employees of businesses with more than 100 workers to be vaccinated for the coronavirus or undergo weekly testing.
A document shared with reporters outlined the governor's specific requests. "If someone is fired from their job for refusing an employer-required COVID-19 vaccine," it read, "then that person should be eligible for reemployment assistance." DeSantis also proposed that the state "establish a program to connect employees terminated based on COVID-19 vaccine status with other employment opportunities."
"Your right to earn a living should not be contingent upon COVID shots," DeSantis said in a Thursday press conference, where he was joined by Florida's newly appointed Surgeon General Joseph Ladopo, who shared anti-vaccine talking points.
Hold on Ronny. I thought extended unemployment benefits wrecked the economy, that people didn’t want to work anymore. That is after all, what the Astroturf layers at Scripps news stations all over the country propagandized at the behest of your donors, right? Single moms with sick children, waitresses with co-morbidities, nurses at the breaking point, truck drivers with nowhere to deliver to, all lazy no-goods, who want to sit home and play video games right?
Of course because the DeSantis regime is the closest thing to political metastatic cancer going right now not named Trump..
In Tennessee..
If you quit your job because you refuse to get vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 in violation of a workplace requirement, you would qualify for unemployment insurance under a new proposal by state House Republicans.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Rusty Grills (R-Newbern), is the third being considered by the General Assembly during a special session intended to approve spending on infrastructure at the Memphis Regional Megasite and incentives for Ford Motor Company.
Now set aside for a moment the sheer audacity of their hypocrisy. Ignore the absolute labor shortage crater their unwieldy asteroid of an idea would leave in the economy..
Not all immunization providers choose to record immunizations they give in TennIIS. The information in TennIIS is only as complete as the information provided by the immunization provider.
Tennessee does not even have a full accounting of who is vaccinated and who is not. Imagine this conversation, hypothetically of course!
TENN Department of Labor: So you qualify for unemployment based on losing your job for refusal to vaccinate. We just need to see proof.
Mr. Smith: You want me to show you documentation I did nothing that would provide documentation?
TDL: Yes.
Mr. Smith: How do you want me to prove I did nothing, when nobody gives an un-vaccinated card?
TDL: A signed attestation that you refused to take the vaccine is fine.
Mr. Smith: So all anyone has to do is tell their employer, who does not have vaccination records, that they did not get the vaccine, get fired, and get unemployments benefits, I guess, forever?
TDL: Yes.
Mr. Smith: What is the vaccination rate in Tennessee?
TDL: About 47 percent are fully vaccinated.
Mr Smith: So you are prepared to pay out unemployment benefits to 53 percent of the state? Forever?
TDL: Prepared? Oh, no Mr. Smith. We figure if we have to hand out unemployment benefits to 53 percent of the state it will be less than two weeks before our director paints his own blood on a volleyball and starts talking to it.
Mr. Smith: I see what you did there..cause FedEx is in Memphis..
Now of course, what Florida and Tennessee try to pull, other out of their minds legislatures will try too. Like Wisconsin, probably Texas, and now Iowa..
In a special session sprint, Iowa lawmakers passed a bill to create exceptions to employer vaccine mandates and to provide unemployment benefits for people fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We needed to find a way to protect Iowans’ individual rights without putting Iowa businesses between a rock and a hard place,” said Rep. Henry Stone, R-Estherville. “After months of hard work, careful consideration and input from Iowans, I believe we have found a meaningful solution.”
The legislation requires employers to waive COVID-19 vaccine requirements in two instances: If the employee had a religious reason not to be vaccinated, or if the vaccine would be “injurious to the health and well-being of the employee or an individual residing with the employee.” Employees who are fired due to vaccination requirements will be eligible for unemployment benefits under the bill.
To be fair, this bill has Democratic support, because Democrats don’t like even stupid people to starve. But considering this nation has about 70 percent of employment age persons fully vaccinated, this means the Republican party is going to campaign on giving perpteual unemployment benefits to 30 percent of the country, and up to 50 percent or more, in certain low vaccination rate states.
Of course if such proposals are widely adopted, this will greatly curtail future vaccination rates, or at least massively increase the amount of people who lie to their human resources department, and create a welfare state that will make The Great Society look like a local low interest small business loan program.
Watching the Republican party abandon all principle in favor of the Fox News/Newsmax/OANN rant of the moment is a plateful of delicious schadenfreude. They have no core platform left, except to “own the libs” and even then, they are now trying to “own the libs” by embracing policies liberals like me support, like unemployment.
So while these MENSA applicants continue to bend over backwards to undermine the best medical advancement to keep their constituents alive, I will just sit back and allow what was once a fiscally conservative party try to convince their Wall Street donors that somehow 30-50 percent of a state being on the unemployment roles for no reason other than “I don’t wanna” is good for the economy.
Because that is what it amounts to. Bad as math as they are, I did it for them. So that leaves me one question, with the Virginia governor’s race coming up, for Glenn Trumpkin Youngkin:
Mr. Youngkin, if you win on Tuesday, you will be a colleague of Governor DeSantis in Florida, who is willing to accept, at least temporaily while reassigning employees to anti-vaxx companies, nearly a 30 percent unemployment rate for his state.
As Virginia working age citizens are about 73 percent fully vaccinated, do you endorse a 27 percent unemployment rate in the state of Virginia?
-ROC
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-ROC