Coronavirus and cannabis legalization; A car company makes ventilators?; Employers Deploy Spy Software; List of Insurance Agents, Loan Officers,....

Coronavirus could accelerate US cannabis legalization

As the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic piles up, U.S. cities and states are set to face significant lost revenue given the loss of business activity.

But, as DataTrek Research’s Jessica Rabe writes in a note, “there’s a simple and effective solution for states and cities to help cover their huge budget shortfalls after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides: legalize recreational sales of marijuana.”

New York, the epicenter of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., might see a revenue drop of $4 billion to $7 billion compared to what it was expecting, according to the state comptroller. With a budget of $87.9 billion, that’s significant.

 “We’ve been thinking a lot about how life will change post-virus, and one big difference will be that state and local governments are going to encounter large unexpected tax receipt shortages,” Rabe wrote. “That’s particularly true when it comes to sales and income taxes amid stressed consumer balance sheets and massive layoffs. And unlike the Federal government, states can’t print unlimited amounts of money.”

Legalization of cannabis for adults, Rabe points out, could be a really easy way to shore up tax basis without driving people out of state, as raising income tax might do. Already it has been successful at raising “hundreds of millions of dollars annually in states like Colorado,” she said. There are currently 11 states with legalized recreational cannabis and another 15 that have decriminalized the drug in one way or another.

Though New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo hasn’t been successful in efforts to push legislation for legalization, conservative estimates have shown it can bring up to $1.3 billion in revenue per year. 

“If Colorado can raise +$300 million from recreational and medical marijuana sales in a year, New York can certainly earn over $1 billion as long as the state taxes and regulates adult-use sales reasonably,” said Rabe, who noted that Colorado’s approach has yielded better results than California, which has missed revenue projections.

If New York were serious about using cannabis as a way to make up for lost revenue, it could be relatively straightforward, given the infrastructure already in place because of medical cannabis dispensaries, which opened in 2016. 

As Rabe sees it, the coronavirus pandemic may give New York a key push toward legalization. 

“The economic impact from this virus may be enough for some states, such as New York, to finally get enough votes to pass such legislation,” she wrote. “While we recognize legal marijuana is a controversial topic for many people, the budget shortfalls that COVID-19 will create may sway opinions about the issue.”

Source: Insurance Journal 3/27/20  Author: Ethan Wolff-Mann

How does a car company make a ventilator?

Efforts by automakers to help manufacture medical equipment raise product liability and intellectual property concerns. An app that tracks where you have been and who you have crossed paths with could help curb the spread of COVID-19 by identifying hotspots. Cyber criminals are taking advantage of people looking for safety information related to COVID-19.

With auto manufacturing on pause thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, companies like Ford and General Motors are volunteering to manufacture face shields, masks, respirators and ventilators for health care workers and other emergency personnel. However, their efforts to aid first responders also raise product liability and intellectual property concerns, experts say.

FDA Requirements: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has eased some of its restrictions for making ventilators and respirators to let medical device makers more easily change existing products and allow automakers and other manufacturers to repurpose production lines to help increase supply. But even with this new flexibility, experts advise that automakers should partner with a company that can guide them on requirements related to ongoing reporting and quality manufacturing standards, according to a Law360 report.

Intellectual Property Concerns: Automakers will need to be aware of who owns the designs for the medical products they want to produce and whether they need to get licenses, experts say, also warning that there could be litigation if any companies believe one of their products has been reverse engineered. However, the president’s invoking of the Defense Production Act of 1950 might “provide auto manufacturers the right to produce these ventilators with potential for the U.S. government to accept responsibility for any related patent infringement,” said one IP attorney.

Meanwhile, there is some doubt about whether automakers are even up to the challenge of switching to medical equipment production. “These are extremely sensitive machines with not only a lot of hardware but also a lot of software. If one of the components does not work correctly, the whole machine shuts down and cannot be used anymore,” warned one ventilator manufacturer’s CEO in a WIRED report.

Source: Carrier Management 3/27/20 Author: Alex Lee

Employers Deploy Spy Software to Monitor At-Home Workers

We’re watching you, it told Axos Financial Inc. employees working from home. We’re capturing your keystrokes. We’re logging the websites you visit. Every 10 minutes or so, we’re taking a screen shot.

So get to work — or face the consequences.

“We have seen individuals taking unfair advantage of flexible work arrangements” by essentially taking vacations, Gregory Garrabrants, the online bank’s chief executive officer, wrote in the March 16 message reviewed by Bloomberg News. If daily tasks aren’t completed, workers “will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination.”

Straight-up Big Brother, perhaps, but it’s perfectly legal for businesses to keep an unblinking eye on employees as long as they disclose they’re doing it. Of course, digital surveillance has been used for years on office desktops, yet it seems a violation of privacy to a lot of workers when they’re required to have software on their computers that tracks their every move in their own homes.

Workers at various companies have complained of excesses, but many of them are new to telecommuting, with its temptations of a midday nap or the demands of children out of school. Employers justify going full Orwell by saying that monitoring curbs security breaches, which can be expensive, and helps keep the wheels of commerce turning.

With so many people working remotely because of the coronavirus, surveillance software is flying off the virtual shelves.

“Companies have been scrambling,” said Brad Miller, CEO of surveillance-software maker InterGuard. “They’re trying to allow their employees to work from home but trying to maintain a level of security and productivity.”

Axos spokesman Gregory Frost said in a statement that “the enhanced monitoring of at-home employees we implemented will ensure that those members of our workforce who work from home will continue” to meet quality and productivity standards that are expected from all workers.

Frost declined to comment on whether Garrabrants, one of America’s top-paid bank CEOs in 2018, is subject to the same monitoring when he works from home.

Along with InterGuard, software makers include Time Doctor, Teramind, VeriClock, innerActiv, ActivTrak and Hubstaff. All provide a combination of screen monitoring and productivity metrics, such as number of emails sent, to reassure managers that their charges are doing their jobs.

ActivTrak’s inbound requests have tripled in recent weeks, according to CEO Rita Selvaggi. Teramind has seen a similar increase, said Eli Sutton, vice president of global operations. Jim Mazotas, innerActive’s founder, said phones have been ringing off the hook.

Managers using InterGuard’s software can be notified if an employee does a combination of worrisome behaviors, such as printing both a confidential client list and a resume, an indication that someone is quitting and taking their book of business with them.

“It’s not because of lack of trust,” Miller said, who compared the software to banks using security cameras. “It’s because it’s imprudent not to do it.”

The software can also be a way for employers to grant more flexibility to workers to fit their jobs around other parts of their lives. It may also let managers spot areas that are overstaffed or where they may need additional hands.

“I can honestly say, as a Hubstaff user, that I actually like the monitoring and productivity features. I promise,” said Courtney Cavey, the firm’s chief marketing officer. “So my personal advice is to use it as an advantage, as a way to prove to your manager that you’re capable of working autonomously.”

Hubstaff allows users to view their activity range and aim to beat it, Cavey said. Most monitoring can be customized, so not all employees are tracked in the same way.

Employers go too far if their monitoring software remains active outside work hours, according to Stacy Hawkins, a professor at Rutgers Law School.

Workers air their grievances on forums such as CodeAhoy, presumably using devices not being watched by their bosses.

“I’ve heard from multiple people whose employers have asked them to stay logged into a video call all day while they work,” said Alison Green, founder of the workplace-advice website Ask a Manager. “In some cases, they’re told it’s so they can all talk throughout the day if questions come up, but in others, there’s no pretense that it’s for anything other than monitoring people to ensure they’re working.”

Other managers take a more low-tech approach, insisting on constant status updates, Green said.

“How these managers are going to get anything done themselves in the midst of all these updates is another question,” she said.

Employers so worried about workers’ every moves might have a bigger issue to deal with, said Sutton of software maker Teramind.

“It’s not about spying on the user,” Sutton said. “If you hired them, you should trust them. If you don’t, they have no reason to be part of the organization.”

Source: Insurance Journal 3/27/20 Authors: Polly Mosendz and Anders Melin

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