The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a regular feature of Daily Kos.

Noah Feldman at Bloomberg writes—Coronavirus Shouldn't Delay Justice in California:

In a little-noticed move over the weekend, California’s judicial council unanimously took some worrisome steps away from constitutional principles. Drawing on emergency powers conferred by state law and an executive order by the California governor, the council changed the deadline of 48 hours for arraigning arrestees to as much as a week. It also extended the date for a mandatory preliminary hearing in criminal cases from 10 days to 30 days; and it added an extra 30 days to the “speedy trial” deadlines for both misdemeanors and felonies.

These measures deserve close scrutiny on their own merits. Fast arraignments, hearings and trials are cornerstones of judicial due process. California is the most populous state in the union, and the changes will affect many arrestees.

But the measures also need a close look because they may set a trend. Throughout the coronavirus crisis, California has been at the leading edge of adopting new measures. San Francisco and other Bay Area counties were the first to adopt formal shelter-in-place orders; and California was the first state to adopt a statewide movement-restricting order. Both of these became influential models. What California does today in criminal justice may soon be followed by other states.

The measures were enacted through a worrisome legal mechanism. California’s emergency law empowers the governor to suspend any state statute temporarily during the duration of the emergency and for some days beyond. You read that right: the law allows the governor to strike laws off the books temporarily. (It doesn’t extend to the state constitution or, of course, to the federal Constitution.)

Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—The Racial Time Bomb in the Covid-19 Crisis:

This was the third death I’d heard about of someone with a connection to my college or a friend who went there. All relatively young, all black men, all diabetics. The two others were in New Orleans, another emerging hot spot.

I recalled an arresting article I’d read from “Undark,” a Knight Foundation-funded, science-oriented digital magazine in Cambridge, Mass. (I’m on the advisory board of the magazine.) As the article pointed out, the virus may prove most devastating in the South because of “poorer health, curbed health care access and skepticism of government.”

What the article doesn’t state outright, but I read in the subtext, was that the virus is more likely to be deadly to black people. Most black people in America still live in the South. The states with the highest percentage of black people are in the South.

We may be waiting for a racial time bomb to explode with this disease.

In the early days of the virus, the relatively few cases on the African continent, I believe, gave black people in America a false sense of security, that black people may be somehow less susceptible to it.

But that is not true, and African-Americans should not look to Africa as the model. 

Sarah Polito at The Guardian writes—Why is Instacart making its contract workers risk their health to do their job?

These days, simply leaving your home to buy food is a gamble. That’s why countless people are calling services like Instacart, which delivers groceries, to spare them a trip to the supermarket. I’ve been an Instacart worker for nearly two years in the Newark/New York area and I’ve never experienced such stress, chaos and craziness. My stomach goes into knots before going into stores because I never know if today will be the day I contract Covid-19 or, worse, spread it to a customer. That is why many of us are striking for better working conditions, including paid sick leave.

Right now, contract workers who shop and deliver orders to customers’ homes are risking our health by doing our jobs. Hand sanitizer, wipes and hazard pay should be given to anyone who is working right now under these conditions, but that is not the case. While Instacart has no problem giving these protections to so-called “in-store shoppers” – Instacart employees who are based in stores, and get orders ready for customers for pick up – they have completely looked past the contract workers like me, called full service shoppers, who travel to the store, shop the order and deliver it to customers.

Without shoppers, Instacart is nothing but an app. 

Kate Bahn at Barron’s writes—The Good Economics Behind Generous Unemployment Benefits:

The United States is already on the lower end of the benefit spectrum among developed countries. The rationale is partially to keep costs low, but it is also to reduce what economists call “moral hazard,” the idea that people will not want to work unless they are incentivized to find a job due to economic hardship associated with unemployment. But when used as a justification for stinginess in social programs, moral hazard often fails to appreciate the crucial role payments play in maintaining aggregate economic activity and household financial security. Low-wage workers spend more of their income rather than saving it, known as their “marginal propensity to consume,” so increasing their take-home pay has a multiplier effect in the economy, generating more economic activity. Paying lower-wage workers less just keeps them from spending.

As policymakers look forward to fostering an economic recovery following the public-health crisis, empirical research shows ambiguous support for the conventional wisdom of minimizing payouts. Prior to the current crisis, economists have researched and debated optimal levels of unemployment insurance generosity, with estimations generally ranging from 50% of prior earnings up higher estimations of 100% for up to 32 weeks. Prior to the passage of the Cares Act, Sen. Lindsey Graham claimed it was a flaw of the bill to be so generous: “We have done the worst thing we could do to the economy, and have incentivized people to not go back to work.” But this idea is questionable even in the best economic circumstances.

Dana Milbank at The Washington Post writes—Republicans were warned. Yet they persisted in defending Trump:

During impeachment, public servants and Democrats warned that Trump was putting his political interests (an announced probe of his opponent) over national security (by withholding military aid to an ally in distress) — and Republicans stood by him. Likewise, as the virus spread, experts and many Democrats pleaded for more urgency. But Trump put his political interests (stock market gains) ahead of public health (by playing down the virus danger). And Republicans averted their gaze.

In the middle of the impeachment trial, on Jan. 26, Schumer demanded that the administration declare a public health emergency so that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could access more funds. “Should the outbreak get worse, they’re going to need immediate access to critical federal funds that at present they can’t access,” Schumer said. “We aren’t here to propel panic or stoke fear, but to rather keep a good proactive effort by the CDC from going on [un]interrupted.”

Certainly, the virus got less media attention because of impeachment. And few in either party anticipated the scale of the outbreak here. But Senate Democrats point to 32 other warnings, requests and statements they made seeking action against the virus — all while the Senate impeachment trial was underway. It begins with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Jan. 17 releasing a letter to Azar about steps “should this outbreak escalate,” and includes several requests to increase preparedness and to reinstate the National Security Council directorate for pandemics that Trump had dissolved.

Daniel F. Becker and James Gerstenzang at The New York Times write—Climate Progress Stalls Again, Thanks to Trump’s New Auto Rules:

President Trump’s rollback on Tuesday of stringent automobile mileage and emissions standards torpedoes the biggest single step any nation has taken to fight the climate crisis. In dispensing with Obama-era rules in the name of imaginary regulatory reform, he will damage the health of the planet, our pocketbooks and even the very auto industry he thinks will benefit. [...]

Under the Trump plan, which is almost certain to face a court challenge by states and environmental groups, including ours, by 2040, vehicles will burn 142 billion additional gallons of gasoline and emit as much as 1.5 billion more tons of pollutants that warm the planet, an Environmental Defense Fund analysis found. That’s the equivalent of the pollution of 68 coal plants operating for five years, according to the E.D.F.

Robert Reich at The Guardian writes—Ignore the bankers – the Trump economy is not worth more coronavirus deaths:

It may seem logical to weigh the threat to public health against the accumulating losses to the economy, and then at some point decide economic losses outweigh health risks. As Stephen Moore, who is advising the White House, warns: “You can’t have a policy that says we’re going to save every human life at any cost, no matter how many trillions of dollars you’re talking about.”

But this leaves out one big thing. The “trillions of dollars” of economic losses don’t exist on any balance sheet that can be tallied against human lives. An “economy” is nothing but human beings. So it matters whose losses we’re talking about – whose losses of life, and whose losses of dollars. [...]

The bankers and billionaires now urging Americans get back to work possess a huge share of that stock market. The richest 1% of the population owns roughly half of the value of all shares of stock. (The richest 10% own more than 80%.)

So when they recommend Americans get back to work for the sake of the “economy”, they’re really urging that other people risk their lives for the sake of the bankers’ and billionaires’ own stock portfolios.

Martin Longman at The Washington Monthly writes—How Internet Thermometers Are Helping During This Pandemic: 

Seemingly everything is a potential invasion of our privacy these days, which is precisely why I’d ordinarily be about the last person to buy an internet-connected thermometer. But it turns out that it’s a very good thing that this product exists. Made by a company called Kinsa Health, the thermometers allow us to pick up hot spots where an unusual number of people are running fevers.

Kinsa’s thermometers upload the user’s temperature readings to a centralized database; the data enable the company to track fevers across the United States.[...]

This serves as a better early warning device than anything the government possesses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tries to pick up on flu outbreaks through a clunky reporting system that relies on doctors’ offices and hospitals, but people don’t generally go to see a doctor on the first day that they’re running a fever. The thermometer data come in quicker and are easy to sort.

The thermometers are now serving another valuable purpose. Quarantines and self-isolation have been in place in enough places for enough time for Kinsa to measure their effectiveness. The good news is that our disruptive safety precautions seem to be working.

Molly Roberts at The Washington Post writes—What ‘essential’ really means in the stay-at-home era:

When we say “essential," what do we mean? There’s what individuals need to survive physically, and what they need to survive mentally, or emotionally, or spiritually, or however else you refer to what’s in our heads and hearts. There’s what a city needs to survive economically, which is more or less a material measure, and what a community needs to survive, which has something to do with mutual trust.

We’re figuring out which bricks we can yank out of Maslow’s pyramid without the whole thing toppling. It’s a way of announcing what we value too much to give up, and what we don’t. Our values are hardly objective, so the outcome may vary from state to state or town to town — depending in part on politics. Gun stores can stick around, but goodbye to abortions in Republican enclaves, unless judges keep coming to the rescue. Marijuana dispensaries get the green light in Los Angeles, but goodbye most everywhere to libraries and bookstores, to playing basketball with a group of friends, to eating peanut butter straight out of the jar and, of course, to handshakes and hugs.

These goodbyes matter. Everything feels so flipped over today that it’s easy to believe we’ll never turn right-side-up again, that this is our new always. Yes, we may return to some kind of normal, but that normal is likely to be a little bit different. Many of these changes will stick.

David Dayen at The American Prospect writes—Unsanitized: It’s the First of the Month:

I’m not really a fan of April 1 in general, with its rollout of amateur comedians and brand social media campaigns. But I’m really not a fan of this April 1, the first day since the coronavirus crisis really rocked America that most residential and commercial rents and mortgages are due. This is the biggest financial expense for most ordinary people and businesses. None of the relief in the $2.2 trillion survival aid package passed last week has gone out the door. And many have spent several weeks without salaries or revenues; those in the underground or cash economies will likely get little or no relief.

The CARES Act does include some protections for borrowers and renters, though it does show the particular biases in our politics. Foreclosures on “federally-backed loans” (defined broadly, that’s about two-thirds of all mortgages, though it could be as low as 20 percent by other counts) are supposed to be frozen for 60 days, and homeowners can obtain up to one year of forbearance, where payments are suspended and tacked on the back end. Landlords that seek forbearance on their multi-family properties cannot evict their tenants, which is a solid protection. Many states have also implemented various foreclosure moratoria and mortgage forbearance protections, listed here. Here’s an example: New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced a 90-day grace period on mortgage payments for those affected by the crisis, without fees.

Shuja Haider at The Nation writes—Covid-19 Shows America’s Class Divide Is Untenable:

Dystopian fiction is often characterized by societies with rulers in remote locations, securing protection from the threats of both nature and the global masses. As it happens, that is the world we already live in, one where eight men own as much wealth as half of the world’s population. Needless to say, this divide affects our access to security and safety in the midst of crisis. As Americans isolate themselves in fear and uncertainty—in some cases, exhibiting Covid-19 symptoms but being told to stay out of the ER unless they can’t breathe—reports have poured in about certain citizens’ getting tested. Ostensibly, these tests are unavailable to those who cannot supply direct contact tracing. Yet supermodel Heidi Klum, online influencer Arielle Charnas, Senators Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and Lindsey Graham, and other high-profile figures have flaunted their results. [...]

To date, eight NBA teams have been tested, including the Jazz, in spite of Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt’s admission that the state was “critically low on test kits.” It is hard not to wonder how tests became so easily available to the rich and famous, when they have been largely inaccessible for those who need them most: health care workers, the critically ill, and the elderly. In February, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney described news of the virus at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where an attendee was later discovered to have been infected, as a political maneuver by the president’s enemies. He had already been tested.

In The Atlantic, Adam Harris writes that a former insurance industry executive offered him a stark explanation for this disparity: “the health-care system in the United States is built for the elite.” Wendell Potter, once a communications director for industry giant Cigna, is now an advocate for universal health-care. “We hear politicians say all the time that we have the best health-care system in the world,” he told The Atlantic. “We have fabulous doctors and health-care facilities, but they’re off-limits to a lot of people because of the cost.”

Sam Adler-Bell at The Outline writes—There was always a way to pay for the programs we need:

So why couldn’t Bernie have responded to Chris Cuomo’s funding question in February the way Biden did last week? “We, out of the treasury, will pay for it.”

Stephanie Kelton, the former chief economist for Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee and an advisor to Bernie’s 2016 campaign, says he could have.

“This was always bullshit,” Kelton told me, “The last eight months of listening to Democrats in the primaries put forward ambitious ideas and always be confronted with this, ‘How will you pay for it? How will you pay for it?’ We never had a real policy discussion because we got so bogged down in the numbers and the math. It’s all a distraction.”

Why? Because the government doesn’t really pay for stuff with tax revenue. This is one of the central insights of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), of which Kelton is a proponent. Instead of raising taxes to pay for government spending, the order of operations is flipped. The government spends money by creating it — in our day and age, with the click of a button — and it taxes it out of circulation. When Congress passes a bill, it sends instructions to the Federal Reserve (our central bank), and the Federal Reserve makes payments on behalf of the Treasury, crediting whichever accounts are beneficiaries of the spending—whether or not the spending is offset by taxes. “You write a bill, you pass the bill, you send instructions to the Fed, the Fed carries out the payments,” says Kelton. “That’s how it works. In war time, in peace time. That’s just how it works.”

Camille Baker at In These Times writes—In the Time of Coronavirus, the Decimation of Local News Outlets Could Have Lethal Consequences: 

To understand why the pleas of experts and officials seem not to have gotten through to many people, we should recall that the virus has arrived in this country at a time when the field of journalism has been significantly eroded. There are many forces involved here, but news organizations are one of the most powerful tools we have for understanding and acting on the virus.

Consider that in Italy, France and Spain, where the governments have imposed extraordinary restrictions and closures to try to slow the spread of the virus, newsstands have been allowed to stay open, alongside grocery stores and pharmacies, because access to news and information was deemed essential. But in many parts of the U.S., even in ordinary times, you couldn’t go out and buy a local newspaper if you wanted to.

In recent decades, local news organizations, which investigate things national outlets don’t, have been decimated. Part of the problem is corporate media consolidation: As of 2018, just 25 companies owned two-thirds of the country’s daily newspapers, according to a report from PEN America. These corporations, driven by a profit motive, produce content that is increasingly homogenous, de-prioritize local reporting, and make decisions to cut staff or close papers altogether from distant big-city boardrooms. Since 2004, over 1,800 newspapers in the U.S. have closed. Over 500 of those were in rural areas.