Thom Hartmann for BuzzFlash: Brian Kemp Doubles Down on Work-and-Risk-You-Lives or Don't Receive Unemployment, With a Bullseye on Small Businesses

April 22nd 2020

By Thom Hartmann

Georgia Governor and corporate toady Brian Kemp said, "We will allow gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studios, barbers, cosmetologists, hair designers, nail care artists, aestheticians [beauticians], their respective schools, and massage therapists to reopen their doors this Friday, April the 24th."

Notice what is missing from that list? Any company or industry large enough to have a lobbyist who can shovel money to Republicans in Georgia, including Kemp. Every business on his list is a small business, and now that he has issued an executive order saying they can be open, those small business owners and employees will probably not qualify for unemployment insurance in Georgia.

This strategy in Georgia, which is being replicated in other Republican-controlled states, may well be the latest effort by Republicans to screw working people and small businesses. Republican governors live in terror of the right-wing billionaires in their states who don’t want them to raise state income taxes or corporate taxes to help cover the costs of average people being out of work. Once again, Republicans put the interests of rich people and big national corporations ahead of the people in their own states.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.