What A Day - Jobless This Mess

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

Florida has now passed New York in total known coronavirus cases, making it the second worst-hit state behind California which is nearly twice its size. In Europe, the UK is imposing a two week quarantine on anyone who’s been in Spain after an uptick in virus spread there. Republicans are set to propose their bill for the next round of coronavirus relief today. As federal unemployment benefits expire, we examine how we got to $600 per week in federal aid, and why Republicans want to reduce that going forward.And in headlines: the 30th anniversary of the ADA, a reduced-capacity Hajj, and more info on a government UFO program.

it's monday july 27th i'm akilah hughes and i'm gideon resnick and this is what a day where we are celebrating the life of the late tv legend regis philbin by giving away a million dollars yeah i'm really not sure how or when we're gonna do it but we are definitely doing that so love to you regis truly a morning show king. We all aspire. On today's show, the future of federal unemployment benefits, then some headlines. But first, the latest. I remember the day when John left home.

Mother told him not to get in trouble. not to get in the way and be particular. But we all know that John got in trouble, got in the way, but it was a good trouble. That was Samuel Lewis, younger brother of Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, speaking at one of several public memorial services that began over the weekend and will continue into this week. Yesterday, John Lewis's casket was carried across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he nearly died decades ago marching for freedom and the right to vote. But in other news, we're back from the weekend and coronavirus is still happening. So let's check in on where we're at. Outbreaks in the U.S. continue to grow amid the lack of leadership in the White House. New York, for the longest time, had been the world's coronavirus epicenter. Then California said, hold my beer, and now Florida just broke

a bottle over their heads. So this metaphor obviously got a little out of hand. But the point is that Florida has now passed New York in total known coronavirus cases, that there is more testing now than when New York was at its peak. No, it didn't have to be this way, but yes, it is this way. California has nearly twice the population of Florida, but only has 30,000 more cases at the time of recording. Both states are on track to pass half a million cases each by August 5th. Good God almighty. And we've talked a lot on our show about the outbreaks in Florida, Texas, and Arizona, but there are other states that are suffering after months of either shutting public health officials' advice and or early reopenings.

That's right. So Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have seen spikes in COVID-19 spread in recent days and weeks too, with each state averaging more than 1,500 new cases each day. You know, these states may get less coverage because they're smaller than places like Florida or Texas, but we are going to be keeping up with that, you know, until this is all over. And a quick update on testing. The U.S. is doing more than ever, but with infection rates growing, it's a real moving target. Only 10 states are actually keeping up with testing at the level experts say is necessary to accurately assess the spread. On the whole, America tested around

800,000 people per day last week, which is well below the 2.1 million that we should be testing daily, according to experts. And for people that are being tested, health officials at local, state, and national levels agree that getting results is taking too long. And that's because of backlogs at labs that are overwhelmed. That's right. And we have an update out of Europe, specifically new requirements in the UK. Yes. So there's been an uptick in virus spread in Spain. So the UK is now imposing 14-day mandatory quarantine on anyone who's been in Spain. But similar to the short notice and shoddy policy rollout of Trump's European travel bans back in March, many people vacationing in Spain were told they could avoid that two-week quarantine if they returned to the UK by Saturday night, which was a move that created a mad dash on airports, which is, you know, also not what you'd want in the middle of

a pandemic. Absolutely not. Yeah. So, all right, let's just shift back to D.C. So last week, we spoke a lot about what Republicans were working on in terms of a relief bill and how they had wasted time not actually getting anything done as the measures from the current bill expire. Let's check in on where things stand after the weekend. Yeah, so Republicans are still expected to release this long-delayed proposed bill today. And the primary hang-up in the last few days has been around unemployment assistance and how exactly to tweak the $600 a week in emergency benefits that we've been talking about. Republicans want to reduce the amount that unemployed people are getting going forward.

And so we'll get into how they want to do that in practice in a moment. But in the meantime, the last federal unemployment checks have now gone out. It is done. And so in an effort to make up for lost time, White House officials are now talking about passing a small, quick bill to extend the unemployment program, but at a reduced level, while the rest of a broader relief package gets worked on in the coming weeks. It's also a sign that they recognize how much the economy needs a boost right now, despite hoping that it would be better at this point. Both Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows talked about this on Sunday shows and said this stopgap bill would also include liability protections for businesses. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she's against doing these relief packages in a piecemeal way. Democrats are also against liability protections for

businesses and reducing the unemployment assistance. And that makes a lot of sense to me. Like if I'm in a group project and I propose a really good project and I've done all the homework and the slacker is like, not only can we not turn it in, but months later is like, hey, here's my worst idea. I'd be pretty annoyed. But let's talk about what Republicans are actually proposing for unemployment. I think that comparison makes a lot of sense. Yeah, they already did the homework and somebody's trying to make up for lost time. But Republicans want to extend the program at a reduced level, like we said.

And right now, the flat $600 a week in federal aid on top of normal state unemployment benefits means that some lower income workers are making more money on temporary unemployment than they were making on the job. Republicans are kind of desperate to change that. Mnuchin, who famously holds up sheets of newly printed dollar bills and photographs, is proposing that people receive 70% of their prior wages cumulatively between state and federal aid if they get laid off. And he wants to do this through state unemployment systems, which we should mention are already overloaded and run on old clunky computer technology. So there is a distinct possibility that switching things up now instead of just continuing with a flat $600 extra could make

things more difficult for these systems to process. Yeah, I think a little context around the $600 is really important too. So remind us why we got to that flat rate. Yeah, so typical state unemployment systems do in fact base the benefits you get on your previous salary, replacing about 45% of what you were making on average, though in some states it can be quite a bit less. And in the spring, when the first COVID-19 relief bills were being conceived, Democrats had wanted to use state unemployment systems to create a formula to give unemployed people 100% of previous wages while the economy went into a shutdown. If you could not work, you could still get money, and therefore you wouldn't be in bad situations financially. Per the New York Times, though, the Labor Department told them that that would be too difficult because state unemployment systems are, again, so bad, which is why they came up with this flat fee that was easier to administer. They set it at $600 a

week because that's the amount that the average worker would need to get to 100% of their salary on top of state unemployment money. If you make less than that average worker, it gets you to over 100%. And most of the pandemic job losses have been concentrated at lower incomes. So now here we are. And folks like Meadows and Mnuchin want to do away with a flat additional fee and go back to a formula that runs through state unemployment systems, which they think are now better equipped, though all the evidence I've seen suggests otherwise. Right. Yeah. for the millions of people dependent on this for, you know, money for food, housing, other essentials, that $600 was also helping the economy, which I thought was the whole point of the Republican Party, right? Like economic anxiety, fix the economy. Republicans are good at that.

Clearly, they're not. Yeah, all of the above. They profess to have this understanding. And yet there doesn't seem to be this acknowledgement that, like you said, this money has also been propping up the economy so far. For example, economists from the University of Chicago found that people who are getting these benefits are spending 10% more than they were before the pandemic. And it's even higher than that among lower wage workers. There are studies showing that the combination of stimulus checks and the

supplemental unemployment money prevented a rise in poverty. And on the other Republican point that giving this money to people, if it exceeds that 100% of their salary is keeping them from returning to work. There just isn't evidence that that's the case. The overwhelming evidence, though, is that the jobs just aren't there right now. Yeah. So we don't exactly know what happens when the $600 is reduced, but it would appear that less money will go back into the economy. And that already overloaded state unemployment systems would have to figure out a new benefits formula almost immediately if this Republican plan gets passed. But that is the bet Republicans are apparently comfortable with, despite many economists not agreeing. Yeah, and in an election year, like, in a damn election year, they have

figured it out. Well, we'll continue following this in the coming days and weeks. But that is the latest for now. It's Monday, WOD Squad, and for today's temp check, we are talking about an uplifting tech story. So in England, a sailor who dropped his iPhone X in the water managed to recover it one week later and found it fully functional. The phone had been resting in the mud about 50 feet below the surface. And Apple reps suggested that maybe the mud had filled the phone's charging port and kept it alive. So, Giddy, are you this blessed with cell phones or do yours just break like everyone else's?

Get out with this story. This is not, there's something, I don't believe something about what is happening here. I'm not blessed with phones. I have a massive crack across my current screen. We got a lot of drops going on. I have like one of the ones ones that when you buy the phone, they're like, this for sure is double layer plastic and glass.

It's going to protect everything. And it's like, no, after 55 drops, you just can't protect anything. It's like a skull. Turns out the ballistic glass from the future isn't actually as futuristic as we thought. It is. It's a numbers game at some point. And I am I am losing it. But have you OK, so this this English gentleman, his phone is alive from mud, apparently, according to Apple. Have you had such a smartphone miracle in your existence? No. Like I remember one time I dropped a phone into a toilet.

It immediately broke. And they didn't give me a new one for, like, weeks. So I was just, like, using a landline because that's the world we lived in. And then one time I dropped my cell phone. Like, I dropped it in New York on concrete. Hadn't broken. I always have, like, a glass protector.

Like, the next week I dropped it on carpet in a building. And I'm like, this will be fine. I turned it over, totally shattered to hell on both sides. So like, no, I've never had a smartphone miracle. If anything, it's a miracle that they last as long as they do without exploding in my hand, which is what I think I'm overdue for quite honestly. Yeah, no, seriously. I remember when the big concern with like Motorola razors was like, you're going to sit on it and it's going to snap in half or something. And I was like, I would I'm happy going back to that time because I similar to him. Yeah, I feel like they're like any phone is going to break with something that I'm doing.

So, you know, let it be one that's flashy and looks like a razor. That's very cool. All right. Well, just like that, we have checked our temps. I hope that, you know, in the past, you were a cool person who had a Motorola Razr that you could take selfies with. And in the future, whatever the cool phone is, you get that too. So stay safe and we will check in with you all again tomorrow.

Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. the ADA paved the way for the roughly 61 million Americans with disabilities to get equal access to jobs, schools, transportation, public spaces, and more. Furthermore, the ADA led to the construction of things like curb ramps and elevators that everybody uses. The law is especially relevant now as we deal with a pandemic that is testing the limits of our not that well organized national health care system. In Alabama, the ADA was invoked to prevent the state from withholding ventilators from people with intellectual disabilities. Yeah, shout out to the ADA. While protests against police violence continued in cities across the country over the weekend, in Seattle, police responded to thousands of protesters in the streets with flash grenades and pepper spray.

Videos showed officers shoving protesters who stopped to help someone who was injured. In Portland, an organized group of moms and dads and nurses led a massive march, which federal agents declared a riot later on and proceeded to tear gas crowds. The most tragic incident happened in Austin, Texas, where a protester was shot and killed. Garrett Foster was pushing his fiance in a wheelchair when a man in a vehicle opened fire. Protesters say the driver had been threatening them with his car, and as of now, the driver's identity is not known. The annual Muslim ritual of Hajj will begin in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday with fewer than

10,000 people attending the five-day pilgrimage to the city of Mecca that ordinarily draws over 2 million. With religious gatherings seen as major spreaders of COVID-19, the Saudi Arabian government is taking extra precautions to keep this year's Hajj safe. Beyond drastically limiting the event's size, they're also requiring participants to wear face masks, self-quarantine for 11 days prior to attending, and refrain from touching the Kaaba, the black cubic building inside Mecca's Grand Mosque that is the holiest site in Islam. And while elderly people are usually prioritized to be able to attend the Hajj,

this year it's only open to people aged 20 to 50 living in Saudi Arabia. Overall, we basically agree that 2020 is a bad year, right? But we also think that there's one thing that's good about it, and that's the slow trickle of evidence we've seen that the government tracks alien spaceships. Last week, a New York Times report offered more insight into the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, a program that the Pentagon claimed was disbanded in 2012. Well, it actually wasn't. They probably just said that, so I'd stop sending them my resume all the time. The program was moved to a different part of the Pentagon, but it remains active and is becoming more transparent. Senators with a view into the program's operation said it's not as exciting as it seems. It mainly exists to make sure countries like Russia and China haven't

blown us out of the water with new aerial technologies. However, one astrophysicist who worked for the Pentagon said he'd examined materials from a UFO crash site as recently as March and concluded that they came from, quote, off-world vehicles not made on this Earth. Wow, probably going to be a while before the aliens visit us again, though, because, you know, our planet is definitely under some kind of outer space travel ban. They have fully eliminated COVID-19. They do not want to come here. Yeah.

Put a mask on the planet. And those are the headlines. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, abduct us if you're aliens, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just the screen on our phone that's been submerged for eight days like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick.

And we'll keep you posted on the million dollars. I really hope you win. Yeah, I hope you win as well. I can't promise it'll be for me. It won't be for me. Sorry. Yes, I don you win as well. I can't promise it'll be for me. It won't be for me. Sorry. I don't have it.