A COVID19 White Collar Crime Wave
Just because the United States is undergoing profound social and economic crises, grifters haven’t stopped grifting, corporations haven’t stopped stealing, and the Trump gang is still lining up at the trough.
All those people who ran out and bought AR-15s last month must be disappointed, as “street crime” is down across the board. There are no hordes storming Santee looking to loot toilet paper.
As we should have learned by now, all but the most egregious of the Real Crimes taking place will go unpunished should its enablers get past the ballot box come November. After all, we're living in an era where war criminals are used as campaign fodder and conscientious captains are punished and then forgotten.
It’s difficult for me to suppress my instincts while watching these actions, knowing that as a society we have yet to create a meaningful consequence for such practices somewhere this side of leading offenders to the guillotines.
Going beyond the reality of the suffering and death caused by contempt for the rule of law, along with a prideful neglect of basic governance, what is happening should be considered criminal conduct in a government of and by the people.
The richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world has been brought to its knees. And the only legitimate responses being considered have to do with what path to “normalcy” should be taken.
The Senate has passed along rescue bill 3.5, which supposedly provides funding to fill the void left by big banks as they moved their wealthiest business customers to the front of the line for so-called paycheck protection.
The New York Times details this activity in an article with a headline that tells you all you need to know: Banks Gave Richest Clients ‘Concierge Treatment’ for Pandemic Aid.
A story in the Union-Tribune describes the “loan process” from the point of view of a 200-employee San Diego manufacturer of science research equipment used by higher education institutions worldwide.
When the stimulus loan program kicked off on April 3, a Friday, DeGeller worked over that weekend with his bank, JP Morgan Chase, to get his paperwork submitted on April 5. During the initial weeks of the shutdown, he kept employees on the payroll, even though his factory was idle.
But this past Saturday, DeGeller, president of the company, heard from JP Morgan Chase that Quantum Design’s loan had not been funded.
Meanwhile, big financial institutions took care of their bank’s bigger customers, going so far as to fill out the paperwork on their behalf, keeping them up to date at every stage in the process.
At JPMorgan, the two-tiered system was in place as soon as the S.B.A. began accepting applications. When the Treasury Department released guidance to banks just hours before the program opened, leaders of Chase’s retail bank hosted a nationwide conference call to provide workers with directions on how to handle customers, according to two employees of the retail bank.
Chase employees were already getting calls and emails from longstanding customers, who thought that their relationships with branch managers and bankers would get them some personal help. On the call, the bank’s leaders told branch employees who normally dealt with customers not to get involved in the application process. If business owners called to ask about their applications — even if they were well-known customers — employees were to tell them not to worry, that their applications were in a queue and would be processed as quickly as possible.
And the beat goes on...
The company that owns Ruth Chris Steakhouses gobbled up forgivable loans supposedly for companies with less than 500 employees. The five thousand plus employees at its restaurants won’t see any “paycheck protection,” but executives and management personnel are covered.
From GQ:
The company made $42 million in profit on $468 million in revenue last year, which the company partly spent on more than $5 million in stock buybacks, and it has $86 million in cash reserves. Ruth's Hospitality Group successfully applied for the maximum $10 million in PPP loans for two of its properties, even as the company reports that it has furloughed a "significant number of field and home office team members."
UPDATE: via NBC
Ruth's Chris Steak House will return the $20 million coronavirus small business loan it procured from the government's $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program, the company announced Thursday...
...the chain has been under fire for accepting stimulus loans earmarked for struggling small businesses, not multimillion-dollar corporations.
A Change.org petition circulated this week demanding the chain return the funds drew over 250,000 digital signatures.
Don't worry, there's another one...via The Daily Beast
In late March, real estate investment firm Ashford Inc. was on the verge of financial ruin. But it had an ace in the hole: a pair of D.C. lobbying firms stacked with Trump fundraisers and White House alumni.
A few weeks later, Ashford is now the top recipient nationwide of coronavirus relief aid from the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Act.
https://twitter.com/Jordanfabian/status/1253388796844015622?s=20
Another story from Propublica:
Royal Philips N.V. agreed in September to sell 10,000 ventilators to the U.S. for $3,280 each. It did not deliver. But the Dutch company just announced a new deal with the government. This time, it’s charging roughly $15,000 each.
And another from The Daily Beast:
A Silicon Valley company co-founded by a close ally of President Donald Trump will play a major new role in helping the government track the spread of the coronavirus, pulling information that is being used by top administration officials, including the president himself.
Palantir, the data-mining firm created by investor Peter Thiel, is best known for its work with global intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies. Now, the company has a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help the federal government create a new data platform called HHS Protect Now.
Who needs science, when politics is involved?
Back when things were just starting to break bad with the coronavirus, Nancy Messonnier, the CDC’s director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, was removed from her post as her agency’s point person after sounding early alarms that Americans should begin preparing for “significant disruption” to their lives from a “severe illness.”
The agency, which in any sane administration would be charged with keeping the public updated, went silent in early March. Now the late-afternoon circus at the White House occasionally squeezes in data in between Trumpian tantrums.
We learned yesterday about Brian Harrison, the man brought on to lead the HHS day-to-day response to COVID-19. This was the front line guy responsible for botching the roll-out of a test for COVID-19.
Before joining the Trump Administration in January 2018, Harrison’s official HHS biography says, he “ran a small business in Texas.” The biography does not disclose the name or nature of that business, but his personal financial disclosure forms show that from 2012 until 2018 he ran a company called Dallas Labradoodles.
The company sells Australian Labradoodles, a breed that is a cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle. He sold it in April 2018, his financial disclosure form said. HHS emailed Reuters that the sale price was $225,000.
We also learned about Dr. Rick Bright, who until recently led the agency working on a coronavirus vaccine. He was removed from his post for resisting efforts to “provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public.”
That unproven drug was hydroxychloroquine, the malaria treatment touted by the President and Fox News as recently as April 13. Team Trump has gone silent on the subject as reports continue to surface questioning its efficacy and documenting the dangerous (previously studied) side effects of the medication.
And did you hear the one about the administration’s concierge service?
An internal White House “Covid Mail” email address, for instance, exists to receive queries and suggestions from “friends and family” as well as random individuals — including doctors and business owners — from around the country who have reached out to White House officials. Those emails then get farmed out to the appropriate agencies — from the Food and Drug Administration to the Department of Health and Human Services — but some officials have privately worried that these missives receive priority and distract from more crucial scientific pursuits.
This week, the President went so far as to suggest that a massive increase in coronavirus testing is not necessary for the US to safely reopen businesses, citing his “many people” as proof.
https://twitter.com/Amy_Siskind/status/1253328090119335943?s=20
***
Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell expressed his true intentions following the upper chamber’s passage of the latest relief package, saying he wasn’t too keen on anything not relating to bailing out big business.
Needless to say, this let’em cake attitude wasn’t popular in many circles. Here’s Joan McCarter at Daily Kos, telling us what she really feels:
Immediately following the bill's Senate passage Tuesday, McConnell pulled out the "deficit" card. "You’ve seen the talk from both sides about acting, but my goal from the beginning of this, given the extraordinary numbers that we’re racking up to the national debt, is that we need to be as cautious as we can be," McConnell told Politico.
"We need to see how things are working, see what needs to be corrected, and I do think that the next time we pass a coronavirus rescue bill we need to have everyone here and everyone engaged." That's after May 4. He intends not to act sooner and he intends to drag the entire U.S. Senate back to Washington, whether it's safe for them or not.
He went further with the austerity bullshit talk on Wednesday in an interview with his favorite fellow nihilist, Hugh Hewitt. Rather than the big rescue fund for states and local governments that even Trump has acknowledged is necessary, McConnell says the states should just go bankrupt. "I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. […] It's saved some cities, and there's no good reason for it not to be available."
He was egged on by Hewitt, who said that blue states—California, Illinois, and Connecticut—had given too much to public employee unions. "My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don't have to do that," McConnell said. "That's not something I'm going to be in favor of."
Our Dear Leader is working hard to keep us distracted from the grifting in progress.
As discussion continues about the possibility of a second wave of COVID-19 infections, either as restrictions are left or next fall in tandem with a traditional flu outbreak, President Trump is claiming nothing of the sort will happen.
We might have some "embers" of corona in the second wave. He says he's spoken to "10 different people" and "not gonna be like it was." He also says "it might not come back at all."
On Wednesday, Trump said he had directed the Navy to “shoot down” Iranian gunboats that harass U.S. ships. Pentagon officials told reporters they had received no new directives.
Finally, just to keep our spirits lifted, a bunch military jets will be dispatched around the country for flyovers.
From the Washington Post:
The Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds, the demonstration squadrons for the Navy and Air Force, will fly over some cities together and others separately, according to the memo. The flyovers will take place in the next several weeks “to thank first responders, essential personnel, and military service members as we collectively battle the spread of COVID-19.”
President Trump announced the mission, named Operation America Strong, after it was reported by The Post on Wednesday afternoon. He said that the mission was “the idea of our great military men and women,” and will recognize health-care workers.
https://twitter.com/LorenaSGonzalez/status/1253342509943537664?s=20
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