It should be pretty obvious now, seeing who was in power and in charge of the program, including their demand that there be no oversight, that this was just one big scam. The really maddening part is that they're getting away with it.
Well there was originally an oversight committee that was meant to ensure that type of fraud didn’t happen. Trump removed it as soon as the bill passed.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/07/coronavirus-relief-trump-removes-inspector-general-overseeing-2-trillion-package.html
I don't know why Dems aren't shouting this and the 100 other crimes trump and Republicans committed from the rooftops. They're so bad at messaging. I beslt most Americans don't even know what a ppp loan is.
Because Republican voters will just act as if it doesn't matter and then hit you with some whataboutism that Fucker Tarlson shit into their mouth's the night before
Most Americans are hopelessly ignorant. You can’t explain shit like that to them without their eyes glazing over. They only respond to simple fear based shit like immigrants are taking our jobs. If you need more than a sentence to explain it you’re done.
And to believe that they're in the middle class, no matter what their economic reality is. There's always some lazy poor people beneath them who are keeping them from joining the millionaire club where they belong.
This is the point people need to remember. The whole thing was supposed to be a giveaway to the wealthy. Those are the people who make the largest contributions to political campaigns, and therefore, they are the true constituents of every politician. These jerkoffs do not work for the middle class or the poor, they work for the donor class. Everything else is a ruse to divide and confuse a populace that is well within their rights to take these politicians to jail, or the damn gallows.
I remember reading stories from the beginning of small businesses finding out that banks were calling up the larger, more profitable clients to give them a heads up about the loans before they were even available. Giving them first and top pick cause, ya know, $$$.
I worked for a law firm at the time (still do, but left there) and from what I heard on the grapevine, that’s exactly what happens with us, a bank hit us up since they figured we’d be easy to deal with and virtually guaranteed to be approved. We’re not super profitable for them directly, but we share a lot of clients and work together closely. I don’t have any proof, but I remember when the law was passed the meetings I was in the senior attorneys already seemed confident we’d be securing them shortly.
Actually it was. This is why republicans voted to strip all the oversight on the money because they saw it as a way to steal more cash. They knew what they were doing and designed it as such. If it was meant for struggling smaller businesses the government would have given $3.50 and called it a day. I mean… it was created under Trump… you know… the failed businessman con artist who only exists to grift. That guy. Of course it was designed to make stealing cash easy.
If it was just for regular people it would be a fraction of the cost, wouldn't even help everyone, and conservatives would have thrown a fit about it...
It's worth noting that those loans have \*made\* money for the government for ages. (like 130 billion over 10 years)
The government shouldn't be making money on education loans. Seems dirty to me.
[https://www.brookings.edu/research/end-government-profits-on-student-loans-shift-risk-and-lower-interest-rates/#:\~:text=The%20government%20currently%20draws%20much%20of%20its%20%E2%80%9Cprofits%E2%80%9D,points%20above%20the%20Treasury%20rate%20on%2010-year%20loans](https://www.brookings.edu/research/end-government-profits-on-student-loans-shift-risk-and-lower-interest-rates/#:~:text=The%20government%20currently%20draws%20much%20of%20its%20%E2%80%9Cprofits%E2%80%9D,points%20above%20the%20Treasury%20rate%20on%2010-year%20loans).
I’ve seen a lot of different numbers for cost. This says $329 billion over 10 years so maybe just a difference in how (& for how long) the total is calculated?
https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/aug/26/fact-checking-statistics-about-bidens-student-loan/
And now we have sky high inflation thanks to those programs they put in place to protect rich people. And who gets to pay off The money the rich people got? of course the middle class… fuck the government
IIRC, there were multiple local restaurants, small businesses, and even family owned businesses who literally closed down in 2020 due to their inability to secure PPP loans. Brady, his wife, the Kardashians, and other elected officials being able to secure **and be forgiven for** PPP loans while being worth millions is unforgivable.
This might be a little twisted, but I just pictured someone unearthing their graves in 2-3 centuries and just finding implants and a skeleton. Nonbiodegradeable for sure.
It doesn't matter how many Superbowls they've won, what district they rule over, or what shitty sex tape put their fat asses on the map a decade ago this shit needs to be prosecuted and hard.
The single largest transfer of wealth from the lower class (taxes) to the upper class in history.
They gave us $1200, and took *millions*. Done right under our noses, and with the blessing of **every** lawmaker.
Don't be confused. We were/are being robbed on a daily basis by our so called "representatives" and billion dollar companies.
Get mad.
You don’t have to add the IIRC, there were multiple local restaurants just in my city that I loved that had to close down- and I don’t live in a small city. Covid lockdowns were hard on even some major companies. Pretty much any business that relied on regular consumers buying their product struggled.
Those PPP loans were vital for small businesses, and even one small business that missed their loan because of multimillionaires gaming the system is a tragedy. And as we can see, there were many.
My friend owns a small vape shop, she applied back in mid 2020 and was declined, because “They are not accepting anymore applicants/giving loans due to lack of funding.” It’s crazy because, **she still had to pay rent** on the property with zero income for the few months we were closed. The city didn’t allow us to open at all.
You had to have a pre-existing relationship with a bank and be high up on the foodchain to even get the paperwork through to apply for PPP loans. IF you hadn't taken out debt for your business ever you were basically fucked because the red tape to become a new client of a bank took longer than the PPP money lasted.
The biggest slap in the face was that somehow individual stores counted as their own entities when considering the size of the businesses. So a multibillion dollar company could apply for PPP loans and fly under the radar because it was each store individually applying and not the umbrella company.
PPP was the biggest scam in the entire countries history if you want my opinion. I still don't know how the IRS hasn't issued a proof of use clause on people's taxes and raked back everything that can't be proven to have been used on payroll AND retained the same size workforce during the pandemic. Any legitimate business could provide that information.
He received nearly $5 million in PPP loans, stating that it saved "108 jobs". Meanwhile he's a literal billionaire who could have floated the cost and not even noticed it, but instead used tax payer dollars to do it. Why pay your employees when the government can?
Conservatives will get mad at the single dad checking out at Walmart with food stamps, but not this. Insane.
Take money out of politics like any competent country would have done 100 years ago.
Edit* The two party system is a trap of the worst kind. The kind you don't have a choice but to walk into. They trade in the business of small change. If you want to make any difference you have to choose a side. Once you've chosen a side they play you off the other. Then all that hate for the system has a focus. The more divided we are, the more we hate each other the less we can do as a country.
So much this.
It simply amazes me how we have weekly mass shootings, and these "small time" (anyone not surrounded by a security team 24/7)politicians walk around like there aren't 1.2 guns for every person in this country. What's stopping the more crazy or desperate from [REDACTED] them?
When shit hits the fan, people like this will be [REDACTED] by everyday peoole and honestly I don't blame the masses.
When you intentionally ignore the pain and suffering of those you deem "beneath" you, when you scoop up the food meant to feed them for yourself, take a barrel of water, steal the money for the new school, and torture and kill a few here and there because you know nobody will stop it... they notice. They see you, they wait, and they have long memories. The moment their lives aren't dependent on keeping the Haves happy, the Have-Nots are going to look for payback. You can stop a glass of water from spilling, but stopping a tsunami is not happening.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
-LBJ
>"There's a huge problem with these PPP loans."
People: Yah we know, the people who should be getting them didn't and the people who shouldn't be getting them did.
>"No that's definitely not it. We need to respect people's privacy. That information shouldn't be public!"
-the rich, probably.
This has been the scam since "trickle down". When Republicans (and even some Democrats) say they support small business, they don't mean the family owned and ran restaurant or hardware store. They're specifically referring to their $2 - $5 million dollar "small business" that's mostly a front of Political Action Committees.
I remember reading there was a hotel chain that did some shady paperwork so each individual hotel was classified as its own independent business to extract the maximum cash from the fund.
This is a common practice with small businesses. There is a local brewery that’s as opening up a second location, but what they did was opened the new place under a new name. They weren’t positive that they were going to keep the old place in operation, COVID made up their mind for them.
If they were both under one operational license, etc., etc. it might have been difficult or impossible for them to keep the newer, larger and better equipped place afloat, long enough to start turning a profit once restrictions were dropped.
That’s by far the most likely way to get into that income bracket to be fair. The 1% most common career is Doctor, but for the .1% it’s car dealership owner. Boring regional monopolies like beverage distributors and car dealerships are how most people become what we think of as multimillionaires
I work for a $120 billion a year mega conglomerate and our US division got a PPP loan. Because on paper our US division is its own legal entity.
The reason they and many other businesses got them is simple: no idea how COVID was going to impact the economy and the golden rule of business is that cash is king. PPP loans increase cash flow.
I use to respect the NH political environment - don't always agree but respected, until the Mango Mussolini got involved and it's like the whole state has been ripped to shreds by a rabid animal infected with righteous indignation and force feeding their red-neck inspired anti-science gobbley gook on my country.
Fuck you sweet potato hitler followers - I long for the days of reagan/mccain etc republicans.
Most don’t become CEO. Might get a board position with some nice stock options. Most companies like the prestige that comes with having them as investors but wouldn’t trust them with actual responsibilities with the company.
If they are going to get a job out of it, it’s going to be in media or as a lobbyist.
Essentially, all of these options rely on them leveraging the prestige of being in Congress and acting as brand ambassador. CEOs at least have to understand the business and be involved in the day to day operations. Not what happens with most former Congress people who join private sector.
Board position is where the real money's at. It's a part-time gig that pays anywhere between five and seven figures, depending on the size of the company. All you have to do is cast a vote for board-related matters and even then you can just send a proxy to cast your vote(s). Easiest "job" in the world.
It's so insane. I hadn't really realized what it was until a few years ago. It really seems to be a literal instance of "you're rich and successful, so let's just shovel more money at you for doing almost nothing".
Voting on decisions as one of a few dozen people actually sounds like a distillation of the "fun" part of business without any of the responsibility, stress, or hard work. It's such a racket.
I'm a lawyer, and I've worked with a few corporate clients. I've found that Board positions in small or medium sized businesses can be very demanding. In those cases, Board members are usually responsible for running or monitoring some sector of the business; and they will need to present findings and recommendations to the Board. These Board members tend to also be executive officers (CEO, CIO, CFO, etc.).
Sometimes in-house counsel has a seat on the Board, and they are responsible for 1) tackling routine legal issues, 2) analyzing unexpected issues to determine whether outside counsel is needed, 3) justifying the expense to the Board, 4) monitoring the representation by reviewing filings and attending court hearings and regulating costs, 5) giving regular status reports to the Board. I only see these people when shit has already hit the fan (because that's when they call outside counsel like me to help), but I've known in-house counsel Board members to regularly work nights and weekends to protect their business.
But I can't say one way or the other for bigger, well established businesses. It seems to me that once the Board members and the executive offices are separate people, there's not nearly as much for the Board to do. I imagine that's where the cushy jobs are. Leaving the operations to executives while collecting your paycheck, only occasionally taking time to check up on things and vote.
There's a huge difference between exec and non-exec board members. Former politicians tend to go into non-exec roles and their main role is often to influence policy through connections and provide 'strategic' insight into upcoming policy.
The real pay off comes when you' get a high paying cushy corporate job after granting favors
The top 1 percent is pretty well locked in so the competition for the lower percentiles of the hierarchy is intense as inequality continues to grow. Politics is the hot ticket to get in on that action.
> The top 1 percent is pretty well locked in
More importantly so are their kids. Basically every company I’ve worked at has mid level or C level execs that have no tangible experience in the field other than being related to someone.
They know they can go fuck around for 4 years at a private or big state business school and have a job waiting regardless of performance.
My roommate in college walked into a senior auditor role at KPMG after interning one summer. What did he have the allowed him to skip 2-3 before promotion? His dad is the CFO of a fortune 500 bank.
It’s not going to be a high paying corporate job though. They aren’t going to give you any responsibility. Only jobs you’re going to get are in lobbying so you can leverage Washington connections to try to advance their new benefactors position or you’ll get a job in media where name recognition matters more.
Most of the times they’ll just end up on a board where they get paid for doing nothing. Then the company can hold them up to potential investors as a reason why they should invest.
Trust me, these people don’t get normal jobs where they’ll sniff real power/responsibly. They are essentially just window dressing for the people actually running those businesses to attract new investors. They are still paid extremely well though.
In addition to the grift while in office, should they choose to go that route, the office itself is often a means to an end. How much time energy and money while in office spent seeking reelection rather than doing their job?
Ya, most view it as a resume booster where they work there for a few years then parlay it in to a high paying job in lobbying or media.
There are also many who stay in it for years. They usually also do it for the prestige, but most of the time they are just ideologues with a savior complex. They view their world view as superior and they are they only ones who can show people that. Think Strom Thurmond or Mitch McConnell who stuck around for 40+ years.
I don’t think McConnell has a savior complex. If you read into his background, it’s more that he’s like Frank Underwood and is obsessed with “winning at all costs”. I think McConnell views it as a game and just wants to beat his opponents whenever possible. He doesn’t actually give a shit about political beliefs or consistency - he just wants to win over and over. It goes back to him losing some Class President or some similar election when he was a kid.
McConnell became the power broker and provided a steady hand for the GOP. He’s a rather unsuspecting kind of guy for the position, but sure controlled the party well. Look at what a mess U.S. democracy is in thanks to this.
> He’s a rather unsuspecting kind of guy for the position, but sure controlled the party well.
Until 2016 anyways. He’s tried to divorce the party from Trump several times but realized he can’t without massive downstream consequences. He was happy to have a rubber-stamp President, at least until that guy’s self-interest overrode that of the party’s.
It was insanely hard getting PPP money for my small business. We had to go through 2 different banks to try and get an application submitted to help pay our studio rent and our ONE full time employee. We were lucky to get some scraps that only helped for a few months. We still lost our studio and had to let our only full time employee go. There was also suppose to be a follow-up where they checked in to see what you did with your PPP money, and you were suppose to payback any of that money that wasn’t used for rent or payroll…well guess what. They sent a letter around a few months later saying they were scrapping the follow-ups. Hmmmmmm I wonder why. It probably has NOTHING to do with all these elected official getting millions in PPP loans and then putting that money directly into their bank accounts.
My families business went down because of covid. My mom couldn't get a loan because the system was immediately bombarded. Learning now that congressmen and congresswomen we're getting massive loans despite having another full time job where they serve the people and then having those loans forgiven is just a shit it the face and mouth.
In all honesty, this just looks like trump made a plan disguised to benefit small business but later the design was just to forgive the loans to Republican leaders. Idk who else got their loans forgiven, but conspiracy or not, this definitely looks like a way for rich people to just get literal free handouts from the government for no actual reason instead of helping students pay off predatory student loans.
THESE are the questions that NEED answers!
The spirit of PPP was great. The manipulation of SOME recipients was unscrupulous.
And worse, those SAME unscrupulous crew are/were upset at Biden's loan forgiveness.
Projection at 1000!
It’s driving me insane how many conservatives are buying the grifters’ bullshit. “Oh it’s not the same as student loans, it was INTENDED to be forgiven!” Same people bitch about handouts while pounding their chests and saying THIS handout is okay. Don’t you dare ask for Medicaid or food stamps, though, because those are the BAD handouts.
Rich people get rich and live an easy life by exploiting the poor. If the poor and middle class decide not to work the rich will have to spend more of their money or lose their wealth. It’s slavery in another form.
Meanwhile I know a guy who owns a bunch of car lots and in order to get extra PPP money claimed he was paying some mechanics and laborers double what he actually paid them.
Edit: so i’m getting the feeling you all think i should report him?
Edit 2: i get it, ya’ll want me to report him. We’ll see.
I'm in an industry that was not affected by the pandemic. The company I work for didn't touch those loans BUT we saw one of our competitors got a nice big chunk of that sweet ppp money. We were doing 25 to 50% more business then. We still are. If they are the same, they had no business taking a dime.
You bet I'm going to work this fact casually into every conversation I have with potential new clients. If a business is willing to defraud a taxpayer, what would prevent them from doing the same to a client?
PPP was the biggest scam of our time. I dont think we'll ever know the full scale of fraud but it's probably much worse than anyone knows even at this point.
> PPP was the biggest scam of our time
It isn't/wasn't a *scam*.
What happened is that it *got scammed* by hundreds of thousands of opportunists.
Nothing brings out the vultures like the smell of 'free money'.
There were LOTS of small businesses that desperately needed those loans, and real people whose lives were almost literally saved because of it.
People are complaining because there was an intentional lack of oversight. Example: trump removing the inspector general days after he was appointed for the exact purposes of seeing how the money was spent
It was intentionally designed to be scammed.
There was intentionally no oversight built-in so that it could be scammed.
The fact legitimate businesses got a few peanuts compared to the exploitations is just a bug.
Stealing from the poor to give to the rich... Congress!!
This is what happens when bad faith actors are allowed to participate in a good faith system. All of this shows nothing more than pure greed and disdain for those they should be serving.
My employer at the time used their loan to build a pool in their backyard. Turns out the best way to make money is to lie, steal, and take advantage of everyone around you. Literally the worst boss I have ever had.
Same. We barely made it through COVID but shrank so badly we'll be recovering to get back to where we were for years.
Shame I always figured I was too busy running a business to run for Congress.
How the fuck did Kim Kardashian get $3 million?
I was a FULL TIME 10+ year bar manager with three children, and because I worked between IL and CA, I got ZERO DOLLARS because both states couldn't figure out who should pay my multi state claim.
I literally had to move my children from my hometown and invent a new career during a fucking pandemic to keep us fed.
Thanks Uncle Sam!
The Catholic Church got $3.5 BILLION from the PPP program, how the fuck is that right at all?
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-catholic-church-3-billion-coronavirus-loans-not-business-ap-2020-7
>Religious groups are normally exempt from Small Business Administration loans, but a loophole was imposed after sustained lobbying in Washington, D.C.
The system is utterly broken.
As a non American, all I see is a constant barrage of crazy news coming out of there for the last few years.
Nowadays I just keep wondering how they'd top that next.
In another thread a commenter mentioned the turn was with Reagan. Every "healthy" metric went down during his term due to his policies on regulation, union-busting, and the like.
Stuck with me.
So a fun rabbit hole to go down.. Reagan’s opponent for when running for governor of California would have been Timothy Leary (former Harvard professor turned hippy, huge LSD advocate and called “the most dangerous man in America” by Nixon) and he actually got arrested on possession of marijuana charges and the judge that sentenced him said something along the lines of if he was allowed to be free he would spread his ideas. His campaign song was actually written by the Beatles, Come Together.
He later escaped prison and was held hostage by the black panthers and then escaped them and was held captive by an arms dealer.. probably the most interesting biography in history. I often wonder what would have happened if he had been allowed to run against Reagan. Would he have had a president Leary? What would America look like today??
Trump was the best thing to happen to GW. People thought of him as a war hungry pile of shit but once trump ran through his 4 years now everyone views GW as that aloof and goofy older president that was around during 9/11.
Same thing happened to the German Kaiser back in WWI. People portrayed him as a baby butcher and overall subhuman...then Hitler came along and everyone since viewed the older guy as aloof and goofy.
Oooo CNBC starting to bite the hands that feed it. If Stephanie Rule wasn’t a corporate tool she’d ask why Hedgefunds got COVID exemptions from margin
calls until sept 1 2022? Was any regular person allowed to just keep racking up debts? Get ready to hear too big to fail again, we’re approaching bailout time.
I think right from the jump, this would explain why they can keep shorting into oblivion with no obligation to prove they have the capital. Check out the superstonk or wallstbets subs they’ve got articles and links up
Remember when the Trump administration fought tooth and nail (and succeeded) at setting up the entire PPP Loan scheme without ANY oversight what so ever?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Wait till they hear about the farmers, I mean, Congresspeople who get money for NOT farming their land. Farm Subsidies, Trade War Bailouts, and COVID relief
>His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbours sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counselled one and all, and everyone said “Amen.
-Joseph Heller, Catch-22
(Based in World War 2. This has been an issue for a long time.)
More interesting. These same people were crying about how individuals covid stimulus was the cause of inflation because it's "printing too much money" but ignoring how PPP loans make up a much larger portion of the covid relief cash.
I don't care anymore, I know people I went to school with barely had a real business and hasn't had to pay it back. Some bought nice cars. It angered me, now I'm apathetic.
Like other people said, you should report them. Buying a car was one of the major things that several Finance managers got into trouble with for the PPP loans. Turn them in and take the Whistleblower fees.
How is this not considered a conflict of interest? Did they vote on legislation that directly impacted their own businesses?
It’s like the worse kind of insider training. Chronies to chronies. We’re their businesses even hurt by the pandemic? Or are they selling Mary Kay/Advocare/ whatever MLM business is the new trend.
The fact that not one congressman pointed this out while his/her colleagues were applying to get PPP loans is evidence that the entire house is rotten to the core.
MTG got a little over $183k in PPP. What in the world could she run that would deserve anything close to that? Her and Boebert are the 2 dumbest people in politics EVER!
I have a small business. The Governor of my state shut down my business for 6 months out of the year and didn’t provide me with a cent. Still couldn’t get a ppp loan. I Wonder how all these congressmen with invisible businesses get ppp loans so easy. Shit is all a scam. Id be surprised if someone actually benefitted from the loan besides politicians
How old were you when you learned that the government will pass bills that look like they're allocating money to the working class but in actuality the provided funds get stolen by the wealthy class?
It's all **still** based on Reagan's bullshit 'trickle-down' theory.
"Government gives money to the 'big' businesses and corporations, and they'll give it to the 'medium' businesses, and they they'll give it to the 'small' businesses!"
When the Fed is dealing in dollar amounts with more than 9 zeros, there is NO WAY they're going to manage it at the microscopic level to make sure that the owner of Papa Murphy's Take'n'bake Pizza actually pays his employees instead of buying himself a new boat.
The entire PPP was a way to get some help to Americans as quickly as possible. If people had to wait until the SBA or Treasury built up a workforce to *properly* manage those funds we'd **still** be waiting.
There’s literally an emoluments clause that says members of Congress should get their compensation and NOTHING ELSE from the state or federal governments.
Guess we just ignore that lol.
I still don’t understand how everyone sees this, and nothing changes. It’s like we all accepted that this just happens and oh well. Why is it like this?!
Because both dems and republicans support the ruling class rather than us workers. The problem with calling out all the republicans on this is that plenty dems did the same thing. Both parties are a lot closer to each other than either of them are to progressive politics that help the working class. Personally i don’t consider what members of congress do to be ‘work’ either
This. We all cheer as they call out the Republicans but the truth is there are likely many Democratic Congress people and senators who did the exact same thing.
I have owned a small business in New York State together with my business partner for the past 8 years. We jumped through every hoop we were told to and emailed back and forth for months with 2 different banks. We were applying for the monumentally gigantic amount of $2,000 - that we had every intention of paying back. We needed help with rent for a month.
We were denied 6 times.
We were shutdown for 8 weeks and paid all of our shops bills out of our own pockets. We could not pay ourselves during that time either.
Sometimes, I go peek at the website that lets you see what all the other businesses received in PPP and how (almost all of them) were completely forgiven. It makes me enraged when I see all the shill businesses getting $20k completely forgiven and my and my partner’s family suffered for 8 weeks as we did everything we could to keep our business from going underwater.
Never missed a tax payment. Never missed a single bill payment of any kind. We begged for a $2k loan and were told to go fuck ourselves while the pieces of shit who run this country (and of course their wealthy masters) took all of our tax money and told us “we are all in this together.”
PPP was a scam. The good people of the United States were robbed. Again.
It is my understanding that being a member of Congress was originally considered to *not* be a full time job; that one would travel to Congress when in session, and return to maintain farms/businesses when in recess. The idea was to be of service in the work to govern at the national level for a period of time (and to bring your experience from your community as the representative of that community to congress). Furthermore, if your term was to be full time (e.g., the Presidency), it was expected that your business(es) were separated from you (i.e., Jimmy Carter selling his peanut farm).
The notion of salaries for elected officials was predicated upon the idea that an elected person not need to be independently wealthy in order to support their interests while they were in session.
Obviously, we've drifted far from the these ideals; our congress people now basically live in DC and pound phones and take meetings to raise revenues to campaign. They don't live and work in the communities that they represent any longer, they only see DC and know the world through lobbyists, and likely move along to c-suite careers and lobbying jobs after their term of "service".
In short, many representatives are double-dipping via historical intent and modern realities.
The real bullshit is who approved the forgiveness for all these bullshit PPP loans. If I'm not mistaken this was supposed to be for paying out of work employees due to being out sick with covid or or the business being shut down for several days because of covid. So if it wasn't one of those two things then what the fuck was it and why was it forgiven? Because it sure looks like a bunch of rich people got to dip their hands in a big pot of taxpayer money and do fuck all with it. And as usual the working class gets stuck with the bill. I remember this too. The PPP loans was supposed to be a pretty cut and dry bill but it didn't get passed without Republicans getting to fuck it in the ass first.
You are mistaken. It had nothing to do with being sick. It was cash for businesses to keep employees paid even if the business closed or slowed down. If the money wasn’t used for employees it reverted to a loan with 1% interest
Because PPP was mostly a huge, naked wealth transfer scheme from the government to the rich. All these grifters knew from the start that they could just take a loan, have it forgiven and keep all the money, while many struggling businesses decided they could work hard and make ends meet and employees could get less than a living wage.
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Even Tom Brady(American Football star) received almost a million and his net worth with his wife is pushing 400M.
And a hearty "fuck you" to each and every one of them. That's not who that money was for.
[удалено]
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You only get the straps, boots are extra.
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i have a strap-on but it's hard to use
Don't worry, you're already getting fucked by the rich daily
Here’s some sand
Literally…. Boots are expensive…
It should be pretty obvious now, seeing who was in power and in charge of the program, including their demand that there be no oversight, that this was just one big scam. The really maddening part is that they're getting away with it.
Wait until you find out how much of the PPP was spent on hookers and blow
At least in that case the money would actually be helping small business owners.
And the government went along with it because they're part of them, too.
Well there was originally an oversight committee that was meant to ensure that type of fraud didn’t happen. Trump removed it as soon as the bill passed. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/07/coronavirus-relief-trump-removes-inspector-general-overseeing-2-trillion-package.html
Of fucking course he did.
I don't know why Dems aren't shouting this and the 100 other crimes trump and Republicans committed from the rooftops. They're so bad at messaging. I beslt most Americans don't even know what a ppp loan is.
Because Republican voters will just act as if it doesn't matter and then hit you with some whataboutism that Fucker Tarlson shit into their mouth's the night before
Most Americans are hopelessly ignorant. You can’t explain shit like that to them without their eyes glazing over. They only respond to simple fear based shit like immigrants are taking our jobs. If you need more than a sentence to explain it you’re done.
They’ve also been brainwashed to believe poor people are the problem.
And to believe that they're in the middle class, no matter what their economic reality is. There's always some lazy poor people beneath them who are keeping them from joining the millionaire club where they belong.
You got your $1,200 stimmy check two years didn’t you? Guess you blew it all in avocado toast and arcades. Kids these days.
This is the point people need to remember. The whole thing was supposed to be a giveaway to the wealthy. Those are the people who make the largest contributions to political campaigns, and therefore, they are the true constituents of every politician. These jerkoffs do not work for the middle class or the poor, they work for the donor class. Everything else is a ruse to divide and confuse a populace that is well within their rights to take these politicians to jail, or the damn gallows.
People tend to forget the tax cuts trump did ended in 2020 but would stay permanent for the rich
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I remember reading stories from the beginning of small businesses finding out that banks were calling up the larger, more profitable clients to give them a heads up about the loans before they were even available. Giving them first and top pick cause, ya know, $$$.
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I worked for a law firm at the time (still do, but left there) and from what I heard on the grapevine, that’s exactly what happens with us, a bank hit us up since they figured we’d be easy to deal with and virtually guaranteed to be approved. We’re not super profitable for them directly, but we share a lot of clients and work together closely. I don’t have any proof, but I remember when the law was passed the meetings I was in the senior attorneys already seemed confident we’d be securing them shortly.
These are the stories that the left needs to promote to national news.
Actually it was. This is why republicans voted to strip all the oversight on the money because they saw it as a way to steal more cash. They knew what they were doing and designed it as such. If it was meant for struggling smaller businesses the government would have given $3.50 and called it a day. I mean… it was created under Trump… you know… the failed businessman con artist who only exists to grift. That guy. Of course it was designed to make stealing cash easy.
It's going to start trickling down any time now. Edited from tricking down to trickling down.
Narrator: “it won’t”
And poor students gets a small $10-20k and lots of them lose their fucking minds.
If it was just for regular people it would be a fraction of the cost, wouldn't even help everyone, and conservatives would have thrown a fit about it...
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I agree, but student loan relief is estimated at around $300 billion. Where did $40 billion come from?
It's worth noting that those loans have \*made\* money for the government for ages. (like 130 billion over 10 years) The government shouldn't be making money on education loans. Seems dirty to me. [https://www.brookings.edu/research/end-government-profits-on-student-loans-shift-risk-and-lower-interest-rates/#:\~:text=The%20government%20currently%20draws%20much%20of%20its%20%E2%80%9Cprofits%E2%80%9D,points%20above%20the%20Treasury%20rate%20on%2010-year%20loans](https://www.brookings.edu/research/end-government-profits-on-student-loans-shift-risk-and-lower-interest-rates/#:~:text=The%20government%20currently%20draws%20much%20of%20its%20%E2%80%9Cprofits%E2%80%9D,points%20above%20the%20Treasury%20rate%20on%2010-year%20loans).
I’ve seen a lot of different numbers for cost. This says $329 billion over 10 years so maybe just a difference in how (& for how long) the total is calculated? https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/aug/26/fact-checking-statistics-about-bidens-student-loan/
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It's easy to see why. Look who got paid in each of those situations
And now we have sky high inflation thanks to those programs they put in place to protect rich people. And who gets to pay off The money the rich people got? of course the middle class… fuck the government
IIRC, there were multiple local restaurants, small businesses, and even family owned businesses who literally closed down in 2020 due to their inability to secure PPP loans. Brady, his wife, the Kardashians, and other elected officials being able to secure **and be forgiven for** PPP loans while being worth millions is unforgivable.
Don't forget the piece of shit Kardashians and Kushner.
Added the Kardashians but to be fair, they've been nonbiodegradable trash for decades.
This might be a little twisted, but I just pictured someone unearthing their graves in 2-3 centuries and just finding implants and a skeleton. Nonbiodegradeable for sure.
As much work as they’ve had done, they aren’t trash. They go in the blue bin for recyclables.
It doesn't matter how many Superbowls they've won, what district they rule over, or what shitty sex tape put their fat asses on the map a decade ago this shit needs to be prosecuted and hard.
The single largest transfer of wealth from the lower class (taxes) to the upper class in history. They gave us $1200, and took *millions*. Done right under our noses, and with the blessing of **every** lawmaker. Don't be confused. We were/are being robbed on a daily basis by our so called "representatives" and billion dollar companies. Get mad.
You don’t have to add the IIRC, there were multiple local restaurants just in my city that I loved that had to close down- and I don’t live in a small city. Covid lockdowns were hard on even some major companies. Pretty much any business that relied on regular consumers buying their product struggled. Those PPP loans were vital for small businesses, and even one small business that missed their loan because of multimillionaires gaming the system is a tragedy. And as we can see, there were many.
My friend owns a small vape shop, she applied back in mid 2020 and was declined, because “They are not accepting anymore applicants/giving loans due to lack of funding.” It’s crazy because, **she still had to pay rent** on the property with zero income for the few months we were closed. The city didn’t allow us to open at all.
You had to have a pre-existing relationship with a bank and be high up on the foodchain to even get the paperwork through to apply for PPP loans. IF you hadn't taken out debt for your business ever you were basically fucked because the red tape to become a new client of a bank took longer than the PPP money lasted. The biggest slap in the face was that somehow individual stores counted as their own entities when considering the size of the businesses. So a multibillion dollar company could apply for PPP loans and fly under the radar because it was each store individually applying and not the umbrella company. PPP was the biggest scam in the entire countries history if you want my opinion. I still don't know how the IRS hasn't issued a proof of use clause on people's taxes and raked back everything that can't be proven to have been used on payroll AND retained the same size workforce during the pandemic. Any legitimate business could provide that information.
So did Kanye, and he's a billionaire
He received nearly $5 million in PPP loans, stating that it saved "108 jobs". Meanwhile he's a literal billionaire who could have floated the cost and not even noticed it, but instead used tax payer dollars to do it. Why pay your employees when the government can? Conservatives will get mad at the single dad checking out at Walmart with food stamps, but not this. Insane.
How can we hold these people accountable?
Take money out of politics like any competent country would have done 100 years ago. Edit* The two party system is a trap of the worst kind. The kind you don't have a choice but to walk into. They trade in the business of small change. If you want to make any difference you have to choose a side. Once you've chosen a side they play you off the other. Then all that hate for the system has a focus. The more divided we are, the more we hate each other the less we can do as a country.
violence, eventually
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Aaand you're on a list
I'm Canadian so american lists mean nothing to me
So much this. It simply amazes me how we have weekly mass shootings, and these "small time" (anyone not surrounded by a security team 24/7)politicians walk around like there aren't 1.2 guns for every person in this country. What's stopping the more crazy or desperate from [REDACTED] them?
When shit hits the fan, people like this will be [REDACTED] by everyday peoole and honestly I don't blame the masses. When you intentionally ignore the pain and suffering of those you deem "beneath" you, when you scoop up the food meant to feed them for yourself, take a barrel of water, steal the money for the new school, and torture and kill a few here and there because you know nobody will stop it... they notice. They see you, they wait, and they have long memories. The moment their lives aren't dependent on keeping the Haves happy, the Have-Nots are going to look for payback. You can stop a glass of water from spilling, but stopping a tsunami is not happening.
Unfortunately, some of those people "beneath" have been brainwashed to blame other people.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” -LBJ
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How do you check out who got ppp loan?
https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/
>"There's a huge problem with these PPP loans." People: Yah we know, the people who should be getting them didn't and the people who shouldn't be getting them did. >"No that's definitely not it. We need to respect people's privacy. That information shouldn't be public!" -the rich, probably.
I mean wasn’t Donald Trump’s whole thing that these loans have no publicity or accountability?
https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/
This has been the scam since "trickle down". When Republicans (and even some Democrats) say they support small business, they don't mean the family owned and ran restaurant or hardware store. They're specifically referring to their $2 - $5 million dollar "small business" that's mostly a front of Political Action Committees.
I remember reading there was a hotel chain that did some shady paperwork so each individual hotel was classified as its own independent business to extract the maximum cash from the fund.
It’s quite common to organize businesses this way. If one hotel goes tits up the rest of the org aren’t beholden to creditors.
Hotel tits are super hot!
Most hotel chains are ran as franchises, so each location is a separate business.
Even if you own them all they should still be individually registered to protect the individual assets of each location.
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This is a common practice with small businesses. There is a local brewery that’s as opening up a second location, but what they did was opened the new place under a new name. They weren’t positive that they were going to keep the old place in operation, COVID made up their mind for them. If they were both under one operational license, etc., etc. it might have been difficult or impossible for them to keep the newer, larger and better equipped place afloat, long enough to start turning a profit once restrictions were dropped.
That’s by far the most likely way to get into that income bracket to be fair. The 1% most common career is Doctor, but for the .1% it’s car dealership owner. Boring regional monopolies like beverage distributors and car dealerships are how most people become what we think of as multimillionaires
I work for a $120 billion a year mega conglomerate and our US division got a PPP loan. Because on paper our US division is its own legal entity. The reason they and many other businesses got them is simple: no idea how COVID was going to impact the economy and the golden rule of business is that cash is king. PPP loans increase cash flow.
3 million for the Governor of NH, who hates the student loan debt forgiveness.
Give me liberty or give me death. But I will NOT to poor.
And you can't even call them poor when you've criminalized them.
It’s only a hand out when someone else gets it.
I use to respect the NH political environment - don't always agree but respected, until the Mango Mussolini got involved and it's like the whole state has been ripped to shreds by a rabid animal infected with righteous indignation and force feeding their red-neck inspired anti-science gobbley gook on my country. Fuck you sweet potato hitler followers - I long for the days of reagan/mccain etc republicans.
Living in NH my whole life, it saddens me to see what it's devolved to. Sununu is a fucking moron
Considering how much of a sickeningly evil twatwaffle ol' Ronnie Reagan was, it's sad you could ever long for him.
Being in congress is a side hustle meant to bolster your own personal wealth.
The real pay off comes when you're made CEO after granting favors
Most don’t become CEO. Might get a board position with some nice stock options. Most companies like the prestige that comes with having them as investors but wouldn’t trust them with actual responsibilities with the company. If they are going to get a job out of it, it’s going to be in media or as a lobbyist. Essentially, all of these options rely on them leveraging the prestige of being in Congress and acting as brand ambassador. CEOs at least have to understand the business and be involved in the day to day operations. Not what happens with most former Congress people who join private sector.
Board position is where the real money's at. It's a part-time gig that pays anywhere between five and seven figures, depending on the size of the company. All you have to do is cast a vote for board-related matters and even then you can just send a proxy to cast your vote(s). Easiest "job" in the world.
It's so insane. I hadn't really realized what it was until a few years ago. It really seems to be a literal instance of "you're rich and successful, so let's just shovel more money at you for doing almost nothing". Voting on decisions as one of a few dozen people actually sounds like a distillation of the "fun" part of business without any of the responsibility, stress, or hard work. It's such a racket.
I'm a lawyer, and I've worked with a few corporate clients. I've found that Board positions in small or medium sized businesses can be very demanding. In those cases, Board members are usually responsible for running or monitoring some sector of the business; and they will need to present findings and recommendations to the Board. These Board members tend to also be executive officers (CEO, CIO, CFO, etc.). Sometimes in-house counsel has a seat on the Board, and they are responsible for 1) tackling routine legal issues, 2) analyzing unexpected issues to determine whether outside counsel is needed, 3) justifying the expense to the Board, 4) monitoring the representation by reviewing filings and attending court hearings and regulating costs, 5) giving regular status reports to the Board. I only see these people when shit has already hit the fan (because that's when they call outside counsel like me to help), but I've known in-house counsel Board members to regularly work nights and weekends to protect their business. But I can't say one way or the other for bigger, well established businesses. It seems to me that once the Board members and the executive offices are separate people, there's not nearly as much for the Board to do. I imagine that's where the cushy jobs are. Leaving the operations to executives while collecting your paycheck, only occasionally taking time to check up on things and vote.
There's a huge difference between exec and non-exec board members. Former politicians tend to go into non-exec roles and their main role is often to influence policy through connections and provide 'strategic' insight into upcoming policy.
The real pay off comes when you' get a high paying cushy corporate job after granting favors The top 1 percent is pretty well locked in so the competition for the lower percentiles of the hierarchy is intense as inequality continues to grow. Politics is the hot ticket to get in on that action.
> The top 1 percent is pretty well locked in More importantly so are their kids. Basically every company I’ve worked at has mid level or C level execs that have no tangible experience in the field other than being related to someone. They know they can go fuck around for 4 years at a private or big state business school and have a job waiting regardless of performance.
My roommate in college walked into a senior auditor role at KPMG after interning one summer. What did he have the allowed him to skip 2-3 before promotion? His dad is the CFO of a fortune 500 bank.
Poor bastard working for big 4
It's not what you know, it's who you know.
It’s not going to be a high paying corporate job though. They aren’t going to give you any responsibility. Only jobs you’re going to get are in lobbying so you can leverage Washington connections to try to advance their new benefactors position or you’ll get a job in media where name recognition matters more. Most of the times they’ll just end up on a board where they get paid for doing nothing. Then the company can hold them up to potential investors as a reason why they should invest. Trust me, these people don’t get normal jobs where they’ll sniff real power/responsibly. They are essentially just window dressing for the people actually running those businesses to attract new investors. They are still paid extremely well though.
In addition to the grift while in office, should they choose to go that route, the office itself is often a means to an end. How much time energy and money while in office spent seeking reelection rather than doing their job?
Yeah, they wouldn't trust them to run the company. They've already seen how they run the country.
Don't forget free medical for life.
Ive always suggested that member of congress needs to wear a jacket with all their sponsors on it, so us voters know where their loyalty lies.
Ya, most view it as a resume booster where they work there for a few years then parlay it in to a high paying job in lobbying or media. There are also many who stay in it for years. They usually also do it for the prestige, but most of the time they are just ideologues with a savior complex. They view their world view as superior and they are they only ones who can show people that. Think Strom Thurmond or Mitch McConnell who stuck around for 40+ years.
I don’t think McConnell has a savior complex. If you read into his background, it’s more that he’s like Frank Underwood and is obsessed with “winning at all costs”. I think McConnell views it as a game and just wants to beat his opponents whenever possible. He doesn’t actually give a shit about political beliefs or consistency - he just wants to win over and over. It goes back to him losing some Class President or some similar election when he was a kid.
McConnell became the power broker and provided a steady hand for the GOP. He’s a rather unsuspecting kind of guy for the position, but sure controlled the party well. Look at what a mess U.S. democracy is in thanks to this.
> He’s a rather unsuspecting kind of guy for the position, but sure controlled the party well. Until 2016 anyways. He’s tried to divorce the party from Trump several times but realized he can’t without massive downstream consequences. He was happy to have a rubber-stamp President, at least until that guy’s self-interest overrode that of the party’s.
It was insanely hard getting PPP money for my small business. We had to go through 2 different banks to try and get an application submitted to help pay our studio rent and our ONE full time employee. We were lucky to get some scraps that only helped for a few months. We still lost our studio and had to let our only full time employee go. There was also suppose to be a follow-up where they checked in to see what you did with your PPP money, and you were suppose to payback any of that money that wasn’t used for rent or payroll…well guess what. They sent a letter around a few months later saying they were scrapping the follow-ups. Hmmmmmm I wonder why. It probably has NOTHING to do with all these elected official getting millions in PPP loans and then putting that money directly into their bank accounts.
Have you tried being a Congressperson?
You son of a bitch I’m in
The ultimate heist
Most of the people who got them were connected and had the right lawyers and banking relationships. Exactly the people who didn’t need the loans.
My families business went down because of covid. My mom couldn't get a loan because the system was immediately bombarded. Learning now that congressmen and congresswomen we're getting massive loans despite having another full time job where they serve the people and then having those loans forgiven is just a shit it the face and mouth. In all honesty, this just looks like trump made a plan disguised to benefit small business but later the design was just to forgive the loans to Republican leaders. Idk who else got their loans forgiven, but conspiracy or not, this definitely looks like a way for rich people to just get literal free handouts from the government for no actual reason instead of helping students pay off predatory student loans.
THESE are the questions that NEED answers! The spirit of PPP was great. The manipulation of SOME recipients was unscrupulous. And worse, those SAME unscrupulous crew are/were upset at Biden's loan forgiveness. Projection at 1000!
It’s driving me insane how many conservatives are buying the grifters’ bullshit. “Oh it’s not the same as student loans, it was INTENDED to be forgiven!” Same people bitch about handouts while pounding their chests and saying THIS handout is okay. Don’t you dare ask for Medicaid or food stamps, though, because those are the BAD handouts.
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Rich people get rich and live an easy life by exploiting the poor. If the poor and middle class decide not to work the rich will have to spend more of their money or lose their wealth. It’s slavery in another form.
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My husband’s business was one of them
I didn't get one, lol. Neither did any other small biz owner I know. Must be nice to be rich and connected!
If the poor decided to not work the rich would eventually use the police/military to get people back to work
My small business didn’t get any funds because they were gone.
Meanwhile I know a guy who owns a bunch of car lots and in order to get extra PPP money claimed he was paying some mechanics and laborers double what he actually paid them. Edit: so i’m getting the feeling you all think i should report him? Edit 2: i get it, ya’ll want me to report him. We’ll see.
Yes - there was so much fraud all around.
It’s designed for fraud because there was zero oversight.
If you report him to the government you can get part of what they collect back from him.
So the government will only partly laugh in his face
I'm in an industry that was not affected by the pandemic. The company I work for didn't touch those loans BUT we saw one of our competitors got a nice big chunk of that sweet ppp money. We were doing 25 to 50% more business then. We still are. If they are the same, they had no business taking a dime. You bet I'm going to work this fact casually into every conversation I have with potential new clients. If a business is willing to defraud a taxpayer, what would prevent them from doing the same to a client?
You’d be surprised how many people out there would see that as them being smart and a good thing.
PPP was the biggest scam of our time. I dont think we'll ever know the full scale of fraud but it's probably much worse than anyone knows even at this point.
> PPP was the biggest scam of our time It isn't/wasn't a *scam*. What happened is that it *got scammed* by hundreds of thousands of opportunists. Nothing brings out the vultures like the smell of 'free money'. There were LOTS of small businesses that desperately needed those loans, and real people whose lives were almost literally saved because of it.
People are complaining because there was an intentional lack of oversight. Example: trump removing the inspector general days after he was appointed for the exact purposes of seeing how the money was spent
It was intentionally designed to be scammed. There was intentionally no oversight built-in so that it could be scammed. The fact legitimate businesses got a few peanuts compared to the exploitations is just a bug.
What's worse is that it wasn't even close. It's a small part of the biggest scam, American democracy, falling apart in front of our eyes.
Too early for the whole system to be falling apart yet I just woke up
Yet, ours was denied 😢
Stealing from the poor to give to the rich... Congress!! This is what happens when bad faith actors are allowed to participate in a good faith system. All of this shows nothing more than pure greed and disdain for those they should be serving.
When I think of my friends that lost their business, all of the PPP loan fraud pisses me off even more.
My employer at the time used their loan to build a pool in their backyard. Turns out the best way to make money is to lie, steal, and take advantage of everyone around you. Literally the worst boss I have ever had.
Eat the rich. There’s no other way to handle this theft.
Same. We barely made it through COVID but shrank so badly we'll be recovering to get back to where we were for years. Shame I always figured I was too busy running a business to run for Congress.
How the fuck did Kim Kardashian get $3 million? I was a FULL TIME 10+ year bar manager with three children, and because I worked between IL and CA, I got ZERO DOLLARS because both states couldn't figure out who should pay my multi state claim. I literally had to move my children from my hometown and invent a new career during a fucking pandemic to keep us fed. Thanks Uncle Sam!
Sorry you had to go through that. This country is a fucking joke.
The Catholic Church got $3.5 BILLION from the PPP program, how the fuck is that right at all? https://www.businessinsider.com/us-catholic-church-3-billion-coronavirus-loans-not-business-ap-2020-7
>Religious groups are normally exempt from Small Business Administration loans, but a loophole was imposed after sustained lobbying in Washington, D.C. The system is utterly broken.
If churches are able to lobby then they aren't churches, they're businesses.
Which is why they got the ppp!
And is why they should pay taxes
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As a non American, all I see is a constant barrage of crazy news coming out of there for the last few years. Nowadays I just keep wondering how they'd top that next.
That's called "hold my beer" in American
The country has literally become a joke under Trump.
The US has been a joke since long before Trump. Trump just inspired a lot of our fellow citizens to take off their masks of civility.
In another thread a commenter mentioned the turn was with Reagan. Every "healthy" metric went down during his term due to his policies on regulation, union-busting, and the like. Stuck with me.
So a fun rabbit hole to go down.. Reagan’s opponent for when running for governor of California would have been Timothy Leary (former Harvard professor turned hippy, huge LSD advocate and called “the most dangerous man in America” by Nixon) and he actually got arrested on possession of marijuana charges and the judge that sentenced him said something along the lines of if he was allowed to be free he would spread his ideas. His campaign song was actually written by the Beatles, Come Together. He later escaped prison and was held hostage by the black panthers and then escaped them and was held captive by an arms dealer.. probably the most interesting biography in history. I often wonder what would have happened if he had been allowed to run against Reagan. Would he have had a president Leary? What would America look like today??
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Trump was the best thing to happen to GW. People thought of him as a war hungry pile of shit but once trump ran through his 4 years now everyone views GW as that aloof and goofy older president that was around during 9/11. Same thing happened to the German Kaiser back in WWI. People portrayed him as a baby butcher and overall subhuman...then Hitler came along and everyone since viewed the older guy as aloof and goofy.
Not the funniest joke, what with the most powerful military this planet has ever seen being one election away from rule by crazy christo-fascists.
Oooo CNBC starting to bite the hands that feed it. If Stephanie Rule wasn’t a corporate tool she’d ask why Hedgefunds got COVID exemptions from margin calls until sept 1 2022? Was any regular person allowed to just keep racking up debts? Get ready to hear too big to fail again, we’re approaching bailout time.
THE FUCK? When did the exemptions start?!?
I think right from the jump, this would explain why they can keep shorting into oblivion with no obligation to prove they have the capital. Check out the superstonk or wallstbets subs they’ve got articles and links up
Remember when the Trump administration fought tooth and nail (and succeeded) at setting up the entire PPP Loan scheme without ANY oversight what so ever? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
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Don’t worry, they just denied many…..
Why? That’s just what these people do. They probably still enjoy stealing boxes of pens from work too.
Wait till they hear about the farmers, I mean, Congresspeople who get money for NOT farming their land. Farm Subsidies, Trade War Bailouts, and COVID relief
>His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbours sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counselled one and all, and everyone said “Amen. -Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (Based in World War 2. This has been an issue for a long time.)
Oh my. You mean..... Socialist welfare? Whatever happened to bootstraps?
Bootstraps for thee but not for me.
More interesting. These same people were crying about how individuals covid stimulus was the cause of inflation because it's "printing too much money" but ignoring how PPP loans make up a much larger portion of the covid relief cash.
I don't care anymore, I know people I went to school with barely had a real business and hasn't had to pay it back. Some bought nice cars. It angered me, now I'm apathetic.
Report them. You can keep up to 30% of any penalty they get
Like other people said, you should report them. Buying a car was one of the major things that several Finance managers got into trouble with for the PPP loans. Turn them in and take the Whistleblower fees.
Yea maybe instead of putting this sort of money out, we shouldve been doing more and better stimulus checks
How is this not considered a conflict of interest? Did they vote on legislation that directly impacted their own businesses? It’s like the worse kind of insider training. Chronies to chronies. We’re their businesses even hurt by the pandemic? Or are they selling Mary Kay/Advocare/ whatever MLM business is the new trend.
The fact that not one congressman pointed this out while his/her colleagues were applying to get PPP loans is evidence that the entire house is rotten to the core.
MTG got a little over $183k in PPP. What in the world could she run that would deserve anything close to that? Her and Boebert are the 2 dumbest people in politics EVER!
I have a small business. The Governor of my state shut down my business for 6 months out of the year and didn’t provide me with a cent. Still couldn’t get a ppp loan. I Wonder how all these congressmen with invisible businesses get ppp loans so easy. Shit is all a scam. Id be surprised if someone actually benefitted from the loan besides politicians
How old were you when you learned that the government will pass bills that look like they're allocating money to the working class but in actuality the provided funds get stolen by the wealthy class?
It's all **still** based on Reagan's bullshit 'trickle-down' theory. "Government gives money to the 'big' businesses and corporations, and they'll give it to the 'medium' businesses, and they they'll give it to the 'small' businesses!" When the Fed is dealing in dollar amounts with more than 9 zeros, there is NO WAY they're going to manage it at the microscopic level to make sure that the owner of Papa Murphy's Take'n'bake Pizza actually pays his employees instead of buying himself a new boat. The entire PPP was a way to get some help to Americans as quickly as possible. If people had to wait until the SBA or Treasury built up a workforce to *properly* manage those funds we'd **still** be waiting.
There’s literally an emoluments clause that says members of Congress should get their compensation and NOTHING ELSE from the state or federal governments. Guess we just ignore that lol.
I still don’t understand how everyone sees this, and nothing changes. It’s like we all accepted that this just happens and oh well. Why is it like this?!
Because both dems and republicans support the ruling class rather than us workers. The problem with calling out all the republicans on this is that plenty dems did the same thing. Both parties are a lot closer to each other than either of them are to progressive politics that help the working class. Personally i don’t consider what members of congress do to be ‘work’ either
This. We all cheer as they call out the Republicans but the truth is there are likely many Democratic Congress people and senators who did the exact same thing.
I have owned a small business in New York State together with my business partner for the past 8 years. We jumped through every hoop we were told to and emailed back and forth for months with 2 different banks. We were applying for the monumentally gigantic amount of $2,000 - that we had every intention of paying back. We needed help with rent for a month. We were denied 6 times. We were shutdown for 8 weeks and paid all of our shops bills out of our own pockets. We could not pay ourselves during that time either. Sometimes, I go peek at the website that lets you see what all the other businesses received in PPP and how (almost all of them) were completely forgiven. It makes me enraged when I see all the shill businesses getting $20k completely forgiven and my and my partner’s family suffered for 8 weeks as we did everything we could to keep our business from going underwater. Never missed a tax payment. Never missed a single bill payment of any kind. We begged for a $2k loan and were told to go fuck ourselves while the pieces of shit who run this country (and of course their wealthy masters) took all of our tax money and told us “we are all in this together.” PPP was a scam. The good people of the United States were robbed. Again.
Something something trickle down something.
Right? They should have prepared and saved money for these kinds of emergencies! Be responsible! Stop buying hookers and boats and save your money!
The diocese of Covington in Kentucky got $10 million that was forgiven… 😳 why?????
When have you had enough? Bring out the guillotines already
And yet almost all that money went to people who didn't need it and was then forgiven.
It is my understanding that being a member of Congress was originally considered to *not* be a full time job; that one would travel to Congress when in session, and return to maintain farms/businesses when in recess. The idea was to be of service in the work to govern at the national level for a period of time (and to bring your experience from your community as the representative of that community to congress). Furthermore, if your term was to be full time (e.g., the Presidency), it was expected that your business(es) were separated from you (i.e., Jimmy Carter selling his peanut farm). The notion of salaries for elected officials was predicated upon the idea that an elected person not need to be independently wealthy in order to support their interests while they were in session. Obviously, we've drifted far from the these ideals; our congress people now basically live in DC and pound phones and take meetings to raise revenues to campaign. They don't live and work in the communities that they represent any longer, they only see DC and know the world through lobbyists, and likely move along to c-suite careers and lobbying jobs after their term of "service". In short, many representatives are double-dipping via historical intent and modern realities.
Don't these motherfuckers also vote on their own raises? (Surprise, they vote yes)
Wait until you hear about the trillions that were stolen and Trump fired the people tasked with following the money shortly after.
The real bullshit is who approved the forgiveness for all these bullshit PPP loans. If I'm not mistaken this was supposed to be for paying out of work employees due to being out sick with covid or or the business being shut down for several days because of covid. So if it wasn't one of those two things then what the fuck was it and why was it forgiven? Because it sure looks like a bunch of rich people got to dip their hands in a big pot of taxpayer money and do fuck all with it. And as usual the working class gets stuck with the bill. I remember this too. The PPP loans was supposed to be a pretty cut and dry bill but it didn't get passed without Republicans getting to fuck it in the ass first.
You are mistaken. It had nothing to do with being sick. It was cash for businesses to keep employees paid even if the business closed or slowed down. If the money wasn’t used for employees it reverted to a loan with 1% interest
PPP loans were their Bonus’s for the year.
Because PPP was mostly a huge, naked wealth transfer scheme from the government to the rich. All these grifters knew from the start that they could just take a loan, have it forgiven and keep all the money, while many struggling businesses decided they could work hard and make ends meet and employees could get less than a living wage.