Politically connected firms were among the 650,000 businesses to receive government funded small business aid, according to recently released government data. They included a large restaurant franchisee whose CEO is a major donor to President Donald Trump. https://t.co/e2siuBE1MG
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 6, 2020
Of course, the Payroll Protection Program was intended to be a low-documentation, quick-delivery way of doing what the economists call ‘throwing money out of a helicopter’ to keep the economy from collapsing during the first shock of the pandemic. It’s just some kind of miraculous coincidence that the Trump crime cartel’s biggest supporters got there (got theirs) first, before most struggling Heartland diner owners even had the chance to hear about it…
McConnell’s wife’s family business appears on Trump admin’s list of companies that received most PPP money https://t.co/HTx1cv1kmY
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) July 6, 2020
“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing. Also we’re a little short on cash so if there’s any extra taxpayer money lying around, I mean I’m not gonna say ‘no.'” — Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead https://t.co/ELBDa9bv9M
— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) July 6, 2020
A government so small you can pick its pocket while drowning it in a bathtub. https://t.co/zXy9SGUctj
— Schooley (@Rschooley) July 6, 2020
Devin Nunes winery got a PPP loan https://t.co/MoEDszDwUA
— Sam Stein (@samstein) July 6, 2020
Several law firms/orgs involved in impeachment defense of Pres. Trump got $1M+ loans:
American Center for Law & Justice: $1-2M
Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP: $5-10M
Zeichner, Ellman & Krause: $1-2M— Kayla Tausche (@kaylatausche) July 6, 2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — Forty lobbyists with ties to President Donald Trump helped clients secure more than $10 billion in federal coronavirus aid, among them five former administration officials whose work potentially violates Trump’s own ethics policy. https://t.co/LHZbOmkVl9
— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) July 6, 2020
Televangelists, Dallas megachurch that hosted Pence approved for millions in pandemic aid https://t.co/tyBA7RaDDj pic.twitter.com/dk0AcrXT5W
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 7, 2020
If you are a friend of Trump, Covid is a profitunity.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) July 6, 2020
As my old man used to say: These people have their suits tailored with rubber pockets, so they can steal soup.
Can we bring the dot-com bubble site “fuckedcompany dot com” back for the PPP loan scandal?
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) July 6, 2020
Kay
I looked at the UNDER 150k – genuinely small businesses. Those were released but only by zip code and type of business- the withheld names and addresses for under 150k. Some got as little as 20k, which (depending on how your business is set up) you could use to pay yourself.
I think it’s a good program. I knew some people would take advantage but the 4 zip codes I looked at around here did okay. I’m afraid people didn’t know you could request smaller sums- 10k or 20k, or they didn’t have enough information/assistance to apply.
I still think the UI programs and 600 dollar bump is saving the economy, but I think PPP worked okay and we should do it in every catastrophe.
germy
Interesting thread about the sort of money people in Trump’s circle pay for shiny balloon animals.
germy
Nothing for his cow?
Nicole
@Kay: Absolutely it’s a net good, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be shaming and publicizing the greedy and connected with their hands out for money they don’t need.
I think this would be a fine investigation for Biden’s new AG come January to open up.
Kay
I would also hate to see some kind of analysis of what’s a worthy small business or nonprofit. That’s just a terrible idea. I think we can make fun of Grover Norquist because he’s full of shit, but I’m glad there wasn’t any attempt to measure the societal worth of the business/nonprofit.
PsiFighter37
All of a sudden getting Republican ads on my FB feed now. Never seen that before; I would assume with data mining, they would know that I am not their target voter. NRSC and Susan Collins ad this AM…wonder if I am being geotargeted because I am visiting Maine at the moment. I got Sara Gideon’s ads when I was in NYC…so who knows.
germy
Hey, Tucker needed that money! Attacking Tammy Duckworth ain’t cheap.
Baud
I don’t mind pointing out the hypocrisy by some of these groups, but most of these tweets seem like that AP story about Hillary meeting with Clinton Foundation donors while she was Secretary of State. Absent more information, there’s no “scandal” here, anymore than there is a scandal when Trump supporters “receive Social Security.”
Kay
@Nicole:
Well, if there’s fraud I would support an investigation or oversight but the program was designed to speedy – I think as long as they complied with the rules and met the requirements they get the money.
If you wanted to tailor it to TRULY small businesses you could cap it at 250k and make it just for payroll. The vast majority of the loans around here were under 150k.
Kropacetic
All this wasteful government spending on well-connected rich people while everyone else suffers. We’d do better without a government. This is why I never vote. No need to look at which politicians make what decisions, they’re all the same…
/FenceSitter
Kay
@Baud:
To me, it shows how truly stupid the Trumpsters are. They released the info on the loans under 150 k too- no names or addresses but zip codes. Smarter people would have put the focus there :)
Heartwarming stories of the neighborhood vape shop…
Baud
FWIW, Reddit is up in arms about Kanye West getting a PPP loan.
Kay
Liberals should be thrilled with this, really. It is an absolute victory for their economic approach.
Interesting that when it’s REALLY fucking bad conservatives jettison their entire economic theory and take ours :)
It had to WORK, so they went with our plan.
Baud
@Kay: I look forward to the outrage when Bernie gets his free college plan enacted and rich Republicans take advantage of it for their children.
germy
If a Dallas megachurch can receive millions, can it finally admit it’s a… business… and be taxed like one?
I’m not a fan of means testing. I didn’t want people and businesses who really needed help being forced to wait while this administration tried to figure out who was worthy. But I think the IRS should be able to calculate who didn’t need a bailout, and tax the money back next year. This is probably impossible, though.
Kropacetic
Our approach is propping up wealthy people who were slightly set back because they supported our campaigns in the good times? I sure as fuck hope not.
germy
@Kay: Capitalism is great, but it often has to be bailed out by Socialism.
germy
@Baud: But isn’t looking forward to Bernie enacting anything a sucker’s game?
Baud
@germy:
Yes.
Mary G
I want to see the list of the companies who were turned away. Who didn’t get the money because they filled out the form wrong or didn’t have an inside connection.
The Republicans seem to have decided to be Tony Soprano in the sporting goods store – take what you can while the taking is good. If Democrats, the Lincoln Project, the Meidas Touch, and Eleven Films don’t jump all over this, I’ll be pissed.
And if the media hares off after the latest outrageous thing Twitler says instead of really doing a Farenthold-level investigation of who got loans and still laid their employees off, I’ll be even more pissed.
germy
@Mary G:
And I’m seeing lots of stories about people being evicted from their apartments. I thought this stimulus was supposed to prevent this? Either helping tenants or helping landlords?
Also, when it comes to this administration, is the reason I see all the references to Tony Soprano in blog comments because there haven’t been many movies and TV shows about Russian and Israeli mobsters?
frosty
@Kay: The $250K cap sounds like a good idea. You convinced me on means testing being a bad idea. Pointing out hypocrisy though, even without investigating fraud? Fire away!
Mike in NC
I’ll bet the Daughters of the Confederacy got $20 million to put up some more statues. Winning!
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Is there a German word for looking forward to something which will never happen?
Nicole
@Kay: My furrowed brow part is the businesses that jumped to the front of the line.
I totally agree that it’s best that the money got out quickly; it’s why I don’t give two shits about the less than $2billion that was sent out to dead folk in the spring- who cares, when the point was to get money into people’s pockets quickly? But jumping the queue for an upper six figure-seven figure payout? I wouldn’t mind spending a bit of my taxpayer $ to look into that, even if it ends up there’s no there there. If it turns out friends of Trump took advantage of legal loopholes, fine; that’s an opportunity to find them and close them.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
The better tie-in isn’t payroll – it’s premises rent/mortgages and fixed obligations, like loans, software licenses and equipment rental. For a very large number of small businesses, they had no work to do, so payroll would be useless.
germy
I wonder how much Ghislaine Maxwell got?
trnc
@germy:
Each cow gets the max allowed to avoid the lowest tax bracket. If the cow decides to use the money for vacations for Devin, whatcha gonna do?
Patricia Kayden
Jeffro
My problem with this is that we all know how trumpov & Co work: they are quid pro quo all the way.
So…I shovel millions at you during a crisis, whether you need it or not, and you wink wink nudge nudge shovel some back to my re-relection campaign. Ugh. Even if the kickback is just 10%, that’s potentially hundreds of millions of dollars getting turned around on Biden and Democrats around the country.
I get that this was both legal and that the aid helped workers and kept the economy from crashing. Probably the best we can hope for right now is that all of these pro-trumpov recipients are at least publicly outed and reviled. But there ought to be some sort of conditions (as many of you have noted above) that these kinds of bailouts can only go to payroll, can only go directly to workers, etc.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: The in joke is California is Nunes represents REAL California, Central Valley farmers, you know, people who can trace their ancestors back to the Donor Parties and all the cannibal fun times, not those effete cheese eating Coastal Wineries, that Nunes happens to own one.
Kropacetic
So, an implicit acknowledgment that they did know about the Russian bounties coupled with proof they care more about their image than the troops’ well-being.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: Of course he did. Must protect Putin at all costs. I’d love to know what Putin has on him, and I’m beginning to think the tapes are real.
Jeffro
@Patricia Kayden: So they’re going to punish the person/s who let American know trumpov was ignoring Putin’s bounties on our soldiers…but not Putin.
Same playbook as Ukraine. For the same reason.
I guess we will have to settle for more Lincoln Project ads, since apparently nothing merits impeachment anymore.
Amir Khalid
@germy:
What little I’ve seen of Koons’ art is hideous, tacky, and not even mildly thought-provoking. He’s only a celebrity artist because he was briefly married to an Italian porn star/politician/attention-seeker named Ilona Staller. Staller was then notorious for flashy but not very cunning stunts.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: Our theater got…*checks notes*…under $5,000 from PPP. And we were one of the *lucky* county organizations, in that we got anything at all.
trnc
@Kay: It’s fine not to means test the individual $600-1200 payments (although they were somewhat means tested insofar as the amount was based on the income in your last tax filing), but this is unacceptable:
There’s no difference between giving wealthy individuals and corporations billions of dollars they don’t actually need through pandemic funds than there is through tax cuts.
germy
@Amir Khalid: I agree. I like the way they referred to him as an “art celebrity” rather than an artist.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I’m definitely with Kay on this. We shouldn’t be criticizing the program for giving out loans to eligible businesses that asked for them. It’s not, and shouldn’t be, their job to vet the politics of companies requesting loans. Going after the program for doing what it’s designed to do undermines support for doing it again in the future, even if we add desperately needed oversight. So please, be very careful in the way you criticize this stuff so you aren’t undermining a good program in your attempt to catch Republicans in hypocrisy.
trnc
I haven’t seen any complaints about rich people sending their kids to public K-12 schools. Education serves the public good. Shoveling billions of dollars to wealthy individuals and corporations does not.
Ruckus
One of the tweets stood out to me.
shitforbrains has an ethics policy? JM Reiger’s tweet at the end.
trump has an ethics policy. What is it, steal whatever isn’t tied down?
eric
@Jeffro: they are foolish. the story is dying. a witch hunt is the surest way to give it new legs.
trnc
They shouldn’t be vetting the politics. They should be vetting the need by capping the amount and asking for justification on the amount requested over that.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
650,000 companies got money.
How many of them shouldn’t have? It would always be a number greater than zero, no matter who is in charge. The outrage of course is that the people who we are discussing are grifters and we, the citizens, got $1200, companies got just a bit more. Law firms with lawyers who likely got paid in six figure sums got 7 figure sums.
And shitforbrains has an ethics policy? This is probably the most astonishing level of bullshit I think I’ve ever heard.
Just One More Canuck
@Amir Khalid:
“cunning stunts”?
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Not at all. As we saw, many states’ unemployment systems collapsed under the weight of all the people who were laid off, so many people who were eligible for unemployment were unable to get it. The major goal of PPP was to shovel money to businesses so they could continue to make payroll and wouldn’t have to lay everyone off in the first place.
Baud
@trnc:
It’s all just spin. We shouldn’t promote universal programs if we’re going to get upset when people who don’t “deserve” them take advantage of them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: I have join you and Kay on this. Programs like this can either shovel money out so that some who don’t deserve it get it, or they can be tight-fisted to make sure that the “undeserving” don’t get it and then a shitload of deserving people fall through the cracks. If it turns out that the PPP actually was a majority grift, I’ll change my tune. Until then, I am for opening the taps.*
*I will stop here before I mix in another metaphor.
satby
@Roger Moore: I don’t think for a second that most of the businesses cited (a megachurch, really?) “needed” that money. It’s the screamingly obvious corruption that enrages people and alienates them from supporting programs like this. And extends that lack of support to the small time grift they assume welfare and SNAP are. It was twofer for the GOPiggies, they got the money AND they undercut the program and other social welfare programs for the future.
Emma from FL
@Kay: Late to the party as usual but, although I agree with you wholeheartedly, I don’t see why we should not point out that when money was available not a single one of the rich, politically well connected lived up to their own so-called standards about the immorality of handouts. And that the current government, the ones that thinks about people of color as moochers, was good with it.
In a fight for your life, if an enemy hands you a weapon, use it.
Another Scott
@Kay: I’m fine with everyone who applied getting consideration and getting the funding if they’re eligible.
But the government should make the applications and the amount approved, down to the penny, be public information. Similarly with the other public rescue funds. Transparency is essential to minimize abuses, and that’s why Donnie’s people are so against it.
If “American’s Against Government Waste” (or whatever) wants to rail against bad people getting handouts, then they should expect to be metaphorically dragged for the next 5 years when they spout off if they decide to apply for relief.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@Just One More Canuck: Amir might have been confused by time zones and thought this was Balloon Juice After Dark (which it is in KL.)
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
I disagree with you about Koons. Like most sculptors, his work is much better in person than it is in pictures. It may be a bit tacky, but there’s something really interesting about the physicality of it when you see it in person. Also, not directly relating to its artistic value:
Amir Khalid
@Just One More Canuck:
Ah, you noticed.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
I will add one caveat: when this is all over, we need to do an audit and claw back money from companies that weren’t eligible under the terms of the program. If they were obviously ineligible, there need to be penalties. If there was political influence on who got money, the people exerting that influence need to be prosecuted. But that’s stuff we can do when we’re not in the middle of a crisis.
raven
@Roger Moore: Ah, it reminds me of all that Frank Gallo “work” his grad students did.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: I have no issue with that. I would say though, that the standards for clawback would have to be pretty high. Anything below fraud, I would say let them keep it.
H.E.Wolf
Possibly a Spoonerism.
Ladyraxterinok
Heard Robert Jeffress’ First Baptist Church Dallas got a few mil $
That’s the church with the unmasked choir that Pence recently visited
Jeffress is on Trump’s advisory council.
He is on Fox most Friday nights
So we taxpayers are supporting a SBC church!!
different-church-lady
@Baud: I agree, but it’s not whether they qualify that’s the problem: it’s the naked hypocrisy of spending years villifying goverment spending on the safety net and the hoovering up the very same kind of funding when the shit hits their fan.
Roger Moore
@raven:
This kind of thing is true of almost any sculptor who works in metal. I’m at least moderately familiar with the way sculpture works, both as a fan of modern art and as someone who grew up in a city where sculpture was a major local business. Nobody makes sculpture on the scale of Koons’s work by themselves. They get an art foundry to make it for them. The good artists will carefully oversee the work to make sure it represents their vision, but the hands-on stuff is done by specialized craftsmen at the foundry.
And that stuff is just about manufacturing the sculpture. Once it’s made, there’s a whole additional level of jobs associated with the sculpture business. You don’t ship your giant sculpture by going down to Boxes Etc. and buying a standard-sized sculpture box. There are whole businesses built around building custom shipping solutions for artworks. Plus someone as big as Koons undoubtedly has a marketing team, an HR department, etc. He claims to have saved more than 50 jobs with his loan, and I can easily believe it.
And it’s quite common for sculptors working on spec to make smaller editions of their major works. Selling those editions is good for the artist- it’s another, steadier source of income- and for fans of more modest means who couldn’t afford the full-scale version.
Soprano2
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That’s true, especially for a business like our pub that couldn’t profitably open doing just takeout. We didn’t do PPP because our employees were better off on unemployment, but we sure could have used some forgivable money to pay basic bills like phone and utilities.
Amir Khalid
@H.E.Wolf:
Possibly …
Ksmiami
@germy: every single member of this administration and its chief Senate collaborators must be tried and hung.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
My issue was with the kind of businesses that were considered eligible. IT’s hard to see how lobbyist and lawyers are directly effected by the pandemic in the same as like a restaurant or barber shop is.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
IIRC, all this stuff is structured in the form of loans that are supposed to be forgiven if the business uses the money as intended. That should make it relatively straightforward to do a claw-back for businesses that didn’t deserve the money or that didn’t follow the rules.
Baud
@Ksmiami:
Hanged.
Gravenstone
@Baud: When isn’t Reddit up in arms about something?
Shalimar
OT. Bolsonaro has tested positive, and he is taking hydrochloroquine.
Baud
@Gravenstone:
Oh sure. But with respect to the PPP disclosures, it’s Kanye that seems to be drawing the most ire.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Then the Biden admin just needs to run the follow on fairly. Cool.
Amir Khalid
@Shalimar:
You can’t fix stupid.
raven
@Roger Moore: Cool, I’ve been on the periphery for years. My ex was a fine arts undergrad and art ed professor and my current is a fabric artist but that’s about the limit of my knowledge.
rp
I can’t see the downside in pointing out that Trump might have handed out a lot of cash to his buddies who didn’t need it. It’s good politics, and I think it’s far-fetched to think it will have some impact on perceptions of government programs generally.
Gravenstone
@Patricia Kayden: All too typical. Don’t act on the information, rather try to see if you can punish whoever leaked it.
Kropacetic
Something something both sides.
The response is the oldest play in the book. “We Republicans believe the government is wasteful and can’t help anyone. And if you elect us, we’ll prove it.”
gene108
@germy:
The government already decides, who is worthy of benefit programs like SSI, SSDI, SNAP, etc.
It doesn’t just winnow out the undeserving.
The point of PPP loans, and EIDL loans, was to make sure money got into the economy as fast as possible.
The reason we are not in a flow blown depression is because the Democrats in Congress pumped the economy up with the largest stimulus in our country’s history.
MisterForkbeard
@Roger Moore: This was my reading as well: A major part of PPP was to keep people ON payroll – avoid going on unemployment but also to keep things as ‘normal’ as possible.
Baud
Ok then.
Zinsky
Irony is not even possible anymore when writing about the modern Republican Party. That both Grover Norquist’s self-righteous Americans for Tax Reform AND the Ayn Rand Institute are suckling at the public teat during this pandemic is a pretty big “reveal” for those who thought these were moral purists.
“Do as we say – not as we do”
Omnes Omnibus
@rp: I am one of those who couldn’t stand William Proxmire’s Golden Fleece awards (even though he was a good senator otherwise). If the only publicity a government program gets is for the “bad” recipients, then that’s the picture of the program that forms in people’s minds. It reinforces right wing stereotypes about government programs. That seems like a downside to me.
The Pale Scot
A little respite
David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Judi Dench
Overachieving Friend
Disagreement over the Marque
JPL
The trump book is being leaked all over. So far Washington Post has a blurb up and CNN is talking about it now. Family dynamics.
Between this and the Lincoln Project ad, trump is gonna have a very bad day, and that makes me happy.
JaneE
I would have restricted loans to businesses with gross and net income under certain limits. Limit ownership type as well. Possibly by number of employees. After those businesses were taken care of, then look at a second round.
Our local business model is built on tourism. Motels, restaurants, sporting goods and services. A lot of local motels, campgrounds and restaurants around here take a long winter vacation or run short hours, because there isn’t enough business to cover expenses. They count on making enough money from Memorial Day through Labor Day to cover the slow season. Not this year. My favorite place for dinner has been closed for three months. I suspect they will not reopen.
Life isn’t fair, but crony capitalism is a second plague.
satby
You would be incorrect. People really resent the idea that their tax dollars might go to fraud. It’s been a refrain of our opposition from the Reagan years. It surfaces constantly in polls about government spending, the idea that vast quantities of funds are wasted on fraud. And it’s always targeted against recipients of safety net programs, not the actual fraud of white collar tax evasion, corruption in awarding government contracts, etc. Maybe all these recipients qualified, though I bet an investigation will show otherwise, but shrugging it off is the wrong approach.
MisterForkbeard
@Amir Khalid: I’m not sure I buy it. He’s entirely capable (like Trump) of not taking it and lying about it because to do otherwise would be to admit he was wrong about the drug.
Of course, Trump may also have believed he was taking it and his doctor just prescribed him a completely useless and minimal amount of the drug. Homeopathic Hydroxychloroquine.
gene108
@Mary G:
PPP loans were administered by banks.
Banks prioritized what customers got their applications submitted first. There is an issue with large banks, like Wells Fargo and Bank of America prioritizing larger accounts over smaller accounts, which is worth a look into, since the funds were limited and handed out on a first come first serve basis.
In theory, the first application to come into the bank should have been processed first.
The second issue is since these loans are not underwritten, the speed at which the banks process them is based on the business relationship you have with the bank.
A lot of small businesses have a checking account with a bank, but beyond that do not really have a business relationship, i.e. no line of credit, or other commercial service. This did slow down the application processing time for some truly small businesses, because they had to supply more information to the bank, versus slightly larger businesses, with commercial services who the bank had more information on.
On top of all this, you have to understand it’s the Trump administration that is coordinating all this. Guidance was slow in coming out, and often not complete, when it did come out.
The PPP loan program didn’t get into the clusterfuck the EIDL program got into, wherein the SBA just started making up shit about the size of loans they were handing out versus what was in the law.
SBA abruptly drops disaster loan limit from $2M to $150K
L85NJGT
@Baud:
He’s a jackass.
gene108
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
@Soprano2:
The SBA was giving out Economic Injury Disaster Loans, which was not tied to payroll.
I have no idea how well publicized the EIDL program was, but it has not gotten anywhere near the attention the PPP program has gotten.
rp
@satby: Right, but given that the public already feels that way, is criticizing some recipients of PPP loans really going to make that much of a difference? Why not use that attitude to our advantage? I have a hard time believing that saying “Trump is totally corrupt and used the PPP fund to hand out money to his cronies” is going to move the needle that much on attitudes re government spending.
mad citizen
@Baud: Well I know my phone gives me news based on my interests, but it told me they played not only Rocking in the Free World at the Mount Rushmore event, but also Like a Hurricane (speaking of headwinds). People tweeted at Neil Young (his archives address), who responded it was NOT OK.
gene108
@rp:
Most of the money did not go to Trump’s friends. Most of it went to businesses or nonprofits that needed it to survive.
We aggressively target waste, fraud, and abuse in so many government programs by making the application process onerous, and the approval process unlikely many people do not bother applying.
There are lawyers who making sure your Social Security Disability application is filled out correctly, so it doesn’t get rejected the first time you submit.
We’d be better off not obsessing over the minority of cases that misuse a system, and focus on the majority who truly do need assistance.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah yes, the great Golden Fleece award. If I remember correctly, one of them was given to the DoD for some unbelievably expensive toilet.
But to your point, I agree. The right will often talk about how the social safety net programs are abused and how some people will cheat and get benefits they aren’t entitled to. But any large scale program is going to have that happen and once you tighten things up, deserving people fall through the cracks. Hell, they do anyway but there would be even more.
It happens with welfare type programs, farm subsidies, you name it.
The unfortunate thing here was the extremely limited oversight.
And yes, churches qualified. Donations went down for most, employees still needed to be paid, basic expenses still existed. The requirements were very strict as to how much of the money had to go to various expenses.
There are probably some businesses that applied that suffered a minimal loss of income. I don’t know how the law was written to take that into account, but it is something that needs to be examined.
dirge
@Baud: Absent more information, there’s no “scandal” here…
The more information you’re looking for is the involvement of high priced lobbyists connected to the Trump campaign. If you’ve got a legitimate claim, you can just file your application like everybody else, so cutting in these very expensive grifters ought to be a waste of money. Why do it unless your claim is fishy, or you’re jumping the queue, or you’re trying to launder money into the campaign?
Speculative, sure, but how often do you see something suspicious about these people that turns out to be less corrupt than it appeared at first glance?
Amir Khalid
@MisterForkbeard:
Mentioning hydroxychloroquine at all, when it’s already been proven useless for treating Covid-19, is itself stupid. If he’s actually taking it, or his doctors are pretending to give it to him, that’s stupid with a cherry on top.
WaterGirl
@Baud: When is an election NOT a referendum on the current president?
J R in WV
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You don’t understand — the whole point of the program was to enable those small companies with no business to pay their people anyway regardless of the amount of work to do~!!~ They were to pay them even to no show while sheltering in place. So they could afford food.
Kropacetic
Because, despite our best efforts, too much of the public doesn’t differentiate between the parties as far as corruption in public spending. Doesn’t matter how clean an operation a D administration runs. Doesn’t matter how many huge settlements Dem AGs get when they ferret out large scale abuses of public spending.
Everyone knows someone who knows someone who is supposedly living on the dole, not trying to work, and lying about their situation to accomplish this. Even though it’s penny ante bullshit compared to what I described above, people see it closer and some take it far more personally. And Republicans have been beating that horse longer than I’ve been alive.
WaterGirl
@Baud:
To be fair, I am up in arms about Kanye West, just on general principles.
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
Don’t be silly — steal it even if it is bolted down, we have wrenches!!
WaterGirl
@Patricia Kayden: So the Trump Administration is looking into who leaked the news, but they are not looking into the news itself – that the Russians are taking out bounties on US soldiers while Trump turns the other cheek?
NotMax
@Kropacetic
Cadillacs and T-bone steaks.
Kropacetic
No, obviously it’s “steal whatever you want, just don’t get caught.”
topclimber
@trnc: I wonder how many of these cows become cat food after they’ve aged out of the child care credit.
Baud
@dirge: The story about the lobbyists isn’t connected to the PPP program. The story is about other virus aid programs and spending.
Baud
@WaterGirl: Are you Taylor Swift?
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
I agree, open the taps, but in a perfect world there would be some audit mechanism on the back end to go back after the crisis and perhaps nail any malefactors.
J R in WV
@Kropacetic:
Wife had a great friend, W, who often came out to play music with other friends. Then friend W brought his friend who also played guitar, seemed like a good guy. Then we learned he was a lawyer who specialized in taking workers comp settlements away from injured workers.
Learned it from a court case in which law firm sued injured worker — their private detective had video of injured coal miner, gasp painting his house, and carrying a concrete bird bath out into his yard.
Miner painted his house for 30 minutes or an hour each morning after the dew burned off. Then miner’s lawyer speaks to the “concrete bird bath” by picking it up with one hand and waving it at the judge and jury – it was plastic and weighed about 5 pounds, it needed water to hold it down in a breeze!!
Wife told friend to never bring Tom back out to the farm, he was a despicable piece of offal, trying to take their subsistance living from injured people. I agreed totally. What a way to make a living!!
trnc
@Baud: That’s why I don’t think the high dollar pandemic relief should be a universal program. I understand limited verification for limited amounts in order to get the money out fast. What happened here is that people and small businesses who needed the money weren’t able to get it because it ran out after some wealthy people and businesses stuck their hands in the till for some pretty staggering amounts. There’s no way to justify getting 5-10 million bucks to a small lobbying firm quickly (ie, before there’s time to verify need) at the same time that we’re expecting unemployed people to get by for a couple of months on $1200.
Is it possible that said lobbying firm has a justifiable need for assistance? Yes. Do they need millions to get them through 1-2 months before any verification can be done? Nope.
topclimber
@JaneE: I hope it is no too late in thread time to say: Adam Smith (the real one) and I agree– your last line says it all.
rp
@Kropacetic: That’s exactly my point. Dems are going to be attacked for this stuff no matter what, so there’s not much point in worrying about whether this will come back to bite us. For now, borrow a page from Rove’s playbook and use the right’s tactic against them.
@Kropacetic:
Kropacetic
Yeah, that’s disgusting. I wish these types of stories had more cultural cachet than “Welfare Queens.”
Roger Moore
@rp:
There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that Trump handed out cash to cronies who shouldn’t have gotten it. But you have to be very careful to frame what you’re saying that way. What you don’t want to do is to start criticizing everyone that got money who you think shouldn’t have, e.g. evangelical churches. If they didn’t deserve to get money under the terms of the program, point out the exact term of the program that says they shouldn’t have gotten the money. If they’re eligible, leave them alone. At the very most, say we need to tighten up the rules the next time around so that whatever category you think shouldn’t be getting money is excluded; that at least gets the talk back to the need to do this again if the pandemic continues.
glc
David Dayen:
https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-ppp-witch-hunt-misplaced-banks-sba/
topclimber
@japa21: I remember Proxmire as generally a plus, and the Golden Fleece served a purpose. I just don’t recall any of his “REAL WOOL Fleece Awards,” for grants that worked great and needed recognition.
Kay
@trnc:
It didn’t run out though. There’s 130 billion still available. To me the big problem with the program was it was much easier for businesses with existing relationships with lenders to get a loan (always the case) but we had 11 entities in my zip code get loans under 150k so people were able to manage it. Two businesses here used a lender out of Utah, and the lender must have been soliciting or I don’t know how else they would have found them.
Suzanne
@germy: Jeff Koons employs a whole cohort of people in his studio. So does Kehinde Wiley. Probably Damian Hirst, too. So do most artists who work at that level. Think of them more like movie directors than solitary workers and you’ll be closer to the truth.
Felanius Kootea
My university got one of the loans, which I appreciate, since this administration is otherwise determined to ruin universities. It helped prevent staff layoffs.
Their new international student policy especially impacts state universities that have come to depend on tuition from international students (because some state legislatures don’t see the value in supporting higher education or realize that an educated populace is less likely to vote for team red). It may also help turn international students already in the US into unwilling COVID-19 vectors because they have to attend in-person classes to avoid deportation.
Kropacetic
I suppose, then, the choices are “hammer Republicans for their corruption and hypocrisy” and “encourage respect for public spending.” These both have parallels to a base engagement strategy vs. a convince new supporters strategy.
The prevailing view appears to be that you can’t have both; not, at least, without the public getting a much deeper understanding of what our government is doing (not likely).
Kay
Here’s an ethical question for you-all. Can businesses stack the programs? Can they put employees on reduced hours, have them apply for part time UI benefits (including the 600 dollar bump) and pay the remainder of wages out of PPP?
That’s legal. Lawful. It benefits the employees who keep their job and get the 600 bump and it (obviously) benefits the employer and it fulfills the (true) objective of the emergency relief which was “crank out a ton of money or we’re ALL going down”
I say it’s fine but I was 100% on board with “throw money at them” – I lived thru one economic collapse. I would prefer to avoid another.
Emma from FL
Repeating what I said above: it’s not about the program itself. We have been handed a weapon against the “poc take from the rest of us” bullshit.
Ad:
Major Republican donor John Smith paid himself 13 million dollars in 2020 while taking 2 million from the emergency funds meant to help small businesses. Mr. Smith supports a party that keeps telling us that we should pull ourselves by our bootstraps without government help.
Remember: the working glass have bootstraps. Mr. Smith and his friends have lobbyists. And the Republican party loves them.
End ad
trnc
Bingo! Would not be surprised to find that some of these businesses who got pandemic money suffered zero economic loss related to the pandemic.
Kropacetic
@Kay: I would say that’s okay. The problem comes in when we’re prioritizing well-connected businesses and administrative failures that create difficulties for smaller organizations.
Patricia Kayden
Patricia Kayden
@WaterGirl: Well, Trump spoke to Putin and Putin said nyet so it’s all good.
Kay
It is just so funny how MARRIED they are to this strategy, so much so that they cannot make it fit current reality but they cannot let it go. They have to create a proxy Lefty extremist to stand in for Joe Biden because they have nothing else. You always want options, right? They have no options. It’s antifa or nothing.
NotMax
@trnc
Also wouldn’t be surprising if digging revealed some recipients are businesses which exist only on paper.
trnc
OK, I guess I need to straighten out my pandemic funding scorecard. One of the relief programs did run out of money, right?
ETA: I see now that PPP ran out of money, but that new funding was passed.
BlueNC
@Kay: Not exactly, because under the terms of PPP, the loan amount that’s converted into a forgivable grant is tied to previous payroll. So if your previous payroll averages $100K per month and then you cut hours etc so that you’re only paying out $50K per month in payroll, you will end up having to pay back some of the PPP money.
PPP is basically a payroll (plus rent and a few other expenses) pass-through.
Source: My business applied for and got a PPP loan. Under $150K. Through a lender I had never heard of before (that was terrifying) after we discovered that Wells Fargo (our primary business bank) was worse than useless.
MattF
Various selections from Mary Trump’s book are emerging. Donald had a major daddy problem.
Kay
@Kropacetic:
I think it’s fine to attack them as hypocrites but unless you find fraud or undue influence I don’t think you have anything.
The thing wasn’t conditioned on actually losing revenue. It couldn’t be. No one knew who would lose revenue and how much they would lose. The thing was conditioned on staying open. Not folding. That’s all they had to do – they had to spend the funds on expenses necessary to keep people employed (whether those people did work or not) or to keep a physical plant open. If they stayed open and used the funds for those purposes, they’re good.
They could make money while “staying open”. That was allowed. Even encouraged.
I know it’s odd and we’re not used to thinking like this but I thought it was fascinating and kind of amazing and now I want to know why we don’t do this in every emergency :)
NotMax
@BlueNC
Worse than useless has been their business model since stagecoaches went out of fashion.
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
This is something I wish the news media would talk about more. Almost all of the Confederate veneration happened well after the fact. Confederate statues were put up in the 1890s through 1910s as a way of celebrating Southern success in defeating Reconstruction. The Confederate Battle Flag became a symbol of the South during the 1950s and ’60s as a symbol of resistance to the Civil Rights Movement. The media needs to report on this stuff every time they’re talking about Confederate monuments or the Confederate Battle Flag.
trnc
We all had a problem with his daddy. Mainly, the fact that he was able to procreate.
Kay
@BlueNC:
I know the awards were evaluated on previous payroll but in this case the award was reduced to 29k – they asked for more, got less- and so reduced hours did cover the sum of the award.
The reduced hours were legit too. They had less work.
Roger Moore
@trnc:
There’s nothing inherently wrong with someone procreating. The problem was that Fred Trump was a Klan member and general racist asshole who taught his hate to his progeny.
Robert Sneddon
I read a report on that toilet — in fact it was for a number of toilet SEATS, not even the complete toilets and each seat cost multiple thousands of dollars. What?! However…
The toilets the seats were manufactured for were on board a small number of long-range reconnaissance aircraft which had been flying for twenty years and more and were still in service. The toilet was essential on an aircraft with a dozen or so crew that could be in the air for twelve hours or more. The seats needed replacing and there were no spares left in inventory so a production run had to be set up to manufacture a small number of replacements. The original manufacturer wasn’t around, the original moulds were lost, nothing “off the shelf” from Home Depot or Lowes could be fitted since the toilet was a non-standard compact unit fitted into a corner of the cabin. The materials the seat was made of had to be non-hazardous in the event of a fire on-board, no toxic fumes and made from flame-proof/self-extinguishing plastic, easy to clean and sterilise etc.
The result was someone had to design the new seat to fit the existing toilet structure, an injection mould had to be manufactured and a a few dozen seats produced. That’s why “toilet seats that cost thousands of dollars!” was a great talking point.
NotMax
@MattF
Another entry for the “and water is wet” file.
Kay
Oh, you just KNOW the douchebag cheated on his SAT. Hence all the accusations he lobbed at Obama.
Whatever they accuse you of, they are guilty of. Always. Is that true of psychopaths? Because it’s sure true of Donald Trump.
It never made any sense that he thought Obama got poor grades. Even if you loathed Obama he was clearly SMART. Trump thought that because that’s what TRUMP did. He cheated.
Roger Moore
@Robert Sneddon:
There’s almost always an interesting story behind a lot of this stuff. It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of red tape involved with any kind of government contracting. The red tape is there for good reason, but it drives up costs, especially for small projects like the one you’re describing. The problem is that it’s much easier to demagogue this kind of thing than it is to dig into the details and explain why something was legitimately expensive.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Sure! Except maybe the hot young girl who can sing, part. And the millions of followers part.
Kay
We need a review of all Trump hires SATs/ACTs. This whole thing is starting to make more sense to me.
WhatsMyNym
The data released by the SBA isn’t even correct – (Bloomberg $$, limited free views)
Kay
I have close friend whose husband lied and said he graduated college when he applied for his first “real” job 30 years ago. He attended, he just didn’t graduate and they hired him into a lower level job and it was 30 years ago and no one checked.
He’s still with that company and he’s really successful. He runs a whole region and is supposedly great at his job and I have no reason to doubt that and maybe at this point he could come clean and it wouldn’t matter.
But I think about it when I see him- that he has this secret.
MisterForkbeard
@Amir Khalid: A huge part of the Bolsonaro/Trump authoritarion campaign is that they never admit to being wrong.
If Bolsonaro is sick, he’s going to publicly say he took hydroxychloroquine because he previous hyped it and spent a bunch of national money on it. Just like Trump did.
Whether or not he (or Trump) actually took it is immaterial to the larger “cannot ever admit they fucked up” priority.
Another Scott
@Robert Sneddon: My dad worked for Lockheed during the days of outrage over $600 toilet seats and $1000 wrenches and the like. I remember looking at the Lockheed employee newspaper and there was a piece by the CEO of that division talking about it. He said (IIRC) that a big part of the problem in similar contracts was that these unique and normally inexpensive parts had to be billed under some $xxB DoD contract that required dozens of people to sign off on with various checks, swear on their child’s soul that it was necessary and legal, etc., etc., and all of that cost money.
True? Dunno, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were part of the story.
Lots of people don’t realize that the more checks you put on good people who need to do their jobs, the more expensive the work becomes. Yes, taxpayers need to be protected from fraud and abuse, but …
Cheers,
Scott.
MisterForkbeard
@Kropacetic: I think you can do both. Say “This program is good and quick and sometimes that means unscrupulous people can advantage of it. Look at all these hypocritical republicans who screwed you for their own benefit!”
Insist on personal responsibility.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
In a way, this story reminds me of the stuff that came out about Ralph Northam’s yearbook pictures. Yes, it’s disappointing to hear that somebody did bad things a long time ago. But when I’m judging somebody, I’m going to pay a lot more attention to what they’ve done recently than what they did a long time ago. Northam had a record of public service that showed what kind of governor he was likely to be, and that reasonably carried a lot more weight with people than something he had done 30 years before.
WhatsMyNym
@WhatsMyNym: Here’s the link Venture Firms Say They Didn’t Seek Bailouts Despite What Data Show
(Bloomberg $$ – limited free views)
taumaturgo
@germy: Often? Always. Gains are always privatized and losses socialize. A neat trick isn’t?
StringOnAStick
Funny, I have a half sister, a Pentecostal RW idiot, who has spent years trying to get a disability rating and started that quest 2 years after she quit the job she’s claiming was the cause. Then she married a guy who has been trying the same thing. They are both active in their whacky church and are R foot soldiers to the bitter end, stanning for the very party that wants to continue destroying the safety net they so actively are trying to latch onto. Abortion is their only voting issue, and they spent decades mining our parents for $ but age and our mother’s death has cut off that lifeline.
I’m glad the social safety net exists and I strongly agree it needs to be expanded even if my grifter half sister benefits by decades of faking her supposed disability. When you look at how the bottom 50% have lost economic ground over the last 30 years, she is a poster child for the desperation that has led to.
BlueNC
@Kay: In this case, fine by me!
Victor Matheson
@Kay: I wish I had gotten here earlier to comment. After the second infusion of money, essentially every firm that applied got money. You didn’t have to be politically connected, especially once they injected more money. Everyone got a loan.
My church got about $20K and now we can pay our organist and our pastor. The art therapist who uses one of our rooms in the basement of the church got several thousand and now she can pay her bills and her rent to us.
It is not unethical to be against something yet still use the services. I’m not happy about police brutality in numerous document cases, but I will still call them if I have a break-in. I also think that at wealthy, white collar worker I should be paying higher taxes, but I still took the tax cut Trump gave me. That doesn’t make be a hypocrite.
Kay
@Victor Matheson:
Oh, I’m glad. I hate when we start to parse “worthy”. That never ends well for us.
My daughter’s friend got a loan for her t-shirt business. The t shirts are a luxury, sort of novelty shirts, but people want them and buy them. It’s all work.
glory b
@Baud: He and Kim got dragged on black twitter for posting pictures of their VERY expensive hirses they gifted their kids on their VERY expensive ranch.
She was also announcing a mega contract she just signed with a cosmetics company that will, according to Kanye, push her up close to billionaire status.
Folks tweeted things like, “Nice but guess what Kim? I can’t pay rent next month.”
They didn’t read the room on that.
Now, a day or two later, this comes out.
prostratedragon
As my old man used to say: These people have their suits tailored with rubber pockets, so they can steal soup.
Profound thanks and admiration.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
He doesn’t know how to operate a wrench, or even an umbrella and he’s sure not going to tell anyone that he can’t, but more important, he’s not going to tell anyone that he doesn’t know how. So he’s going to either duck out or make up bullshit, literally.
Ruckus
@Kropacetic:
Once again, our general demeanor makes us give shitforbrains too much credit. He learned early on, how to get people to give him too much credit, in every way that word is used.
He doesn’t know how to not get caught, because he doesn’t know how things work at all. He doesn’t understand how he gets caught, because he doesn’t know how things work.
He’s incapable of learning, at this stage of his life, pretty much as he’s been incapable his entire life. Expecting more from him than what you see is the reason he’s gotten where he is.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I of course lived through the last republican economic disaster as well, but if I were a year younger I wouldn’t have, and did only because of SS. I still work, I’m writing this on my lunch break, and my 71st B day is in less than a week. Surviving is good but I’d like the county not to have to keep doing this on every republican rotation.
Kay
@Ruckus:
The next catastrophe they just give everyone ten thousand dollars and see what happens. We’re pretty creative. We could have formed collectives, even :)
Or you can just take your ten thousand and blow it on shit.
Ruckus
@trnc:
Some of his kids weren’t in the same class as shitforbrains, humanity wise, they actually have some.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Well shitforbrains only has one skill, that’s his ability to bullshit.
As he thinks he’s head and shoulders above everyone else, he also thinks he’s therefore smarter, all the while he’s an idiot and projects every single thing he’s “thinking.” He’s done this for a long time.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
I’ve done subcontracting machine work for the DOD. The hoops that one has to work through can be amazing. I had to have a lockable steel cabinet to store paperwork in, and the keys. Nothing about what the cabinet had to look like or how difficult it had to be to break into, nor were there any instructions about the paperwork had to be locked up when not actively using it, or what had to be done with the keys. Everything had to be theoretically checked each step of the way and independently inspected and certified before inspection. Some of that is normal in any aircraft tooling or parts, after all, lives are at stake. I’ve done this in the last 30 days where I work now. So yes everything costs more. Sometimes a lot more. I’ve worked on stainless steel hydraulic valves for air force planes that were replacements for aluminum valves that would crack and leak, causing the planes to crash and kill the crew. The cost of the stainless valves was about 3 times the cost of the aluminum valves. A small price to pay for a complete plane and crew.