Long long before Tik Tok there was Woodstock, that 3-day music festival in 1969 featuring 32 acts before nearly a million people. In addition to all the peace and love at Woodstock, there were some serious protest performances. One sticks in my head right now, Country Joe and the Fish’s anti-war diddy I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin-To-Die-Rag: “Ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee we're all gonna die.”
If I were a small business today, that’s exactly how I’d feel right now. So many have already died, and many more will also die if government aide doesn’t come quick. The U.S. House keeps trying to do that, while the Trump Administration and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell keep trying to nickel and dime the lifeblood out of the U.S. economy.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. Here are some top contenders.
Big businesses lobbyists including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Thanks to these guys, Mitch McConnell got it into his trippy brain that money to help small businesses survive must be contingent on giving big corporations immunity for killing or sickening workers and customers. What’s more, they claim small businesses demand such a thing. In fact, they absolutely do not. They never have.
The Center for Justice & Democracy’s new study, Limiting Lawsuits: Small Businesses’ Least Concern, shows this clearly, noting “as we have reported for years and do so again, internal small business surveys consistently show that restricting lawsuits, or the ‘cost’ of lawsuits, is an issue of less importance to small businesses than almost any issue they could possibly face, or on which they want lawmakers to focus.” CJ&D even reports on surveys done since the pandemic hit, including one by Wells Fargo over the last two quarters:
Q2 2020 Survey. When over 1,475 small business owners were asked to indicate challenges experienced as a result of COVID-19, lawsuits wasn’t among the list of 14 options. When asked, “Thinking ahead to the next 12 months, as a small business owner, what do you need to feel confident you could recover from the economic impact of COVID-19?” limiting lawsuits was not mentioned.
Q3 2020 Survey. When 600 small business owners were asked, “What do you think is the most important challenge facing you as a small business owner today?” lawsuits were not mentioned. When asked to “select the reason why you feel you might have to close” as a result of the pandemic, lawsuits wasn’t on the list.
Incredibly, the U.S. Chamber’s own surveys show that small businesses could hardly care less about their lobbyists’ obsessive focus on limiting lawsuits. For example, according to the Chamber’s own push poll, only 22 percent of “Mom and Pop” stores, i.e. those with 1 to 5 employees, believe that limiting lawsuits is an important issue.
The Insurance Industry. As CJ&D also notes,
The property/casualty insurance is an industry with vast power and economic control over the ability of small businesses to survive the pandemic.… Many small businesses dutifully paid premiums for “business interruption” insurance coverage, expecting claims would be paid when they were forced to close due to lockdown. Instead, insurers have denied all of these claims and fought small businesses in court, which has resulted in the single largest category of COVID-related litigation to date. The U.S. Chamber is actively supporting the denial of these claims.
TBD: The U.S. Supreme Court
As if things couldn’t get worse for small businesses, a case being argued Wednesday (tomorrow), called Ford Motor Company v. Montana Eighth Judicial District and Ford Motor Company v. Bandemer, has the potential to do enormous further damage to them. Let’s hope not.
As the small business advocacy group, Main Street Alliance, wrote in a recent op ed, the case will determine “whether victims of alleged car defects can sue the auto manufacturer in states outside its home state. … If Ford prevails, it may be the first of many big, future losses for small businesses."
The case does not hinge on Ford’s guilt, but how difficult the corporation thinks it should be for someone to hold them accountable. … The added barrier to hold corporations accountable will ultimately mean small businesses are taking on the burden of corporate malfeasance.…
In this case, despite the polarized nature of our courts, a bipartisan group of more than 40 state attorneys general have filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court against Ford in this case. They agree that corporations should not be allowed to invent new procedures to avoid lawsuits, and small businesses should not have to worry about being sued for a defective product they didn’t create.
There’s a new poll out, which sorta summarizes all of these points at once. It shows that “an overwhelming majority [74%] of voters believe the Senate should prioritize coronavirus relief over confirming Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett,” whose confirmation would push the court into an even greater anti-small business direction. As Country Joe may have put it back when Mitch McConnell was a mere 26-year-old (I know, hard to imagine), “Yeah come on all of your big strong men, Small Businesses need your help again.” Take it away Joe.
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