PRESS EDITORIAL: Some pandemic responses are worth protest, but not safer-at-home rules

What if they opened the economy and no one came?

It’s a reasonable question because it is clear that most people support following federal guidelines and state orders on social distancing and will avoid gathering in public places. A national poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs released last week found that only 12% of Americans said shelter-in-place directives went too far, while 87% said the precautions were at the level needed or were not stringent enough.

Polling has been consistent: Most Americans will wait to return to stores, movie theaters, restaurants and other places where close contact is unavoidable until coronavirus infections and deaths decline to levels that suggest it is safer to begin a semblance of normal activity.

Health experts, including those at the CDC, warn that reopening too soon will cause a resurgence of the Covid-19 plague. Economists warn that reopening too soon would thus deal another blow to the already devastated economy.

Everyone, of course, yearns for a return to something like the life we had before the pandemic. But most don’t act out that craving by joining organized demonstrations like the one that drew a crowd to Madison last weekend to protest Gov. Tony Evers’ sensible safer-at-home order.

That event looked more like a political rally, replete with campaign hats, signs and banners, than a demonstration intended to impact Wisconsin’s approach to the dual threat of disease and economic depression.

There are some aspects of the coronavirus disaster, however, that do deserve protests—protests done from home by email, telephone or letter, instead of in tightly packed assemblies that, like the one in Madison, mock the social distancing that at this point is the only remedy that can quell the spread of the disease.

The lack of adequate personal protection equipment for many health care workers, whose ranks represent a grim 20% of Wisconsin’s Covid-19 infections, is a nationwide failure that demands protest.

The scandalously botched relief program for small businesses imperiled by the economic fallout of the pandemic is a target that warrants a full-on assault by protestors.

Members of Congress and the Trump administration wrapped themselves in the cloaks of saviors of Main Street USA while approving $349 billion worth of low-interest loans and grants that were gobbled up by large, profitable corporations, leaving not a penny for many small businesses that applied, or tried to apply, for as a lifeline many may need to survive.

Under the aegis of the Small Business Administration, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), riddled with ineptly drafted regulations and favors for big business inserted at the behest of lobbyists, allowed AutoNation, a New York Stock Exchange-traded company worth billions and a competitor of the local car dealers endangered by the pandemic economy, to get $77 million in federal relief money.

 Other outrageous examples of misuse of federal money meant to help small businesses abound, including that of a company that got a $1.4 million SBA loan even though it paid its chief executive $1.9 million in 2019. And then there is the Los Angeles Lakers NBA team, which received $4.6 million.

The refrain was repeated for the few days the money last­ed­—companies that didn’t need it got bags of it, small businesses were left holding empty bags.

Lawsuits against several of the nation’s megabanks, including some of the villains of the 2008 financial collapse, charge that the financial giants channeled SBA loans to their wealthiest clients while ignoring the applications of smaller businesses. Loan officers allegedly filed applications for the money on behalf of their customers.

Contrast that with the little guys like the owners of businesses in the small towns of Ozaukee County who had to scramble to decode federal regulations, locate application documents, compile business records to fill them out and file them with  their banks, only to learn in too many cases that the relief well had run dry.

If that was the dark side of one of the first federal efforts to save the economy, there is a bright side to offset it a bit in our communities, which was illuminated in a news story on last week’s Ozaukee Press Business Page.

The article told of the remarkable effort of the Port Washington State Bank to approve $38 million in small business loans that directly lift the economies of Ozaukee communities. The staff of the independent, family-owned bank was all but overwhelmed by the challenge of processing 365 applications for PPP loans, a task that involved helping applicants who didn’t have the luxury of guidance from accountants and other advisers to navigate a procedure that was confusing and daunting for some. Yet in a matter of days, the bank approved 87% of the applications it received and quickly moved the funds to the small businesses before the PPP fund was drained.

Politicians can’t resist giving lavish lip service to support small business in order to curry voter approval, even though many have no understanding of how small community economies work. They could learn from the story of how a local bank, a small business itself, helped other small businesses survive a disaster.