TECH BILLIONAIRES FOR MORE ‘CHEAP’ LABOR FOREIGNERS WILL OWN AMERICA SOON. JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS ARE THEIR SERVANTS.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/bidens-neo-fascist-tech-billionaire.html
As Biden takes office, the techies want what they paid for. Reuters reports that executives at top firms like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are gunning for jobs at the Departments of Defense, State, Justice, and Commerce and also eyeing influential posts at the Federal Trade Commission and beyond.
Yang: ‘Return to the Obama Years’ Not Enough for Biden — They Were Left Behind in Those Years,’ ‘They’re Pissed Off’
Late Tuesday on CNN, former Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, now a CNN contributor, warned that his old opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden could not defeat Trump with just a pledge to return to the years of former President Barack Obama alone.
According to Yang, it needed to start with an understanding of what problems facing the country led to Trump’s presidency.
“Donald Trump needs to be defeated,” he explained. “Forty-two percent of my supporters said they would not support the Democratic nominee in the general, in large part because when I ran, I ran for the problems that predated Trump. Like, Donald Trump would never be our president today if things were going well for a lot of people around the country. Bernie Sanders would not have almost been the nominee last time if things were going well for people around the country. So even as Joe Biden saying, ‘Hey, we need to defeat Donald Trump,’ he also has to say, ‘Look, things have not been working for millions of Americans, and after we defeat Donald Trump,’ we need to get deep into these problems, get our hands dirty and solve them. This can’t be a, ‘Hey, I’m better than Trump’ race. It has to be, ‘Hey. I understand how Trump became our president.'”
Yang told a CNN panel people were left behind in the Obama-Biden years, and they were not happy about it. He called on Biden to recognize that situation and address it, which he said would better his chances in the 2020 general election.
“I think he’s been talking about restoring a culture, tone and a soul of the country,” Yang added. “I was talking about putting more money in Americans’ hands because I saw we decimated entire ways of life in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. And because I was talking in those terms about the real problems these people have experienced, again, 42% of my supporters were not going to support the Democratic nominee. I’m hoping that we can get some of those people to support Joe. But it would be helpful if Joe acknowledged it because one of the weaknesses of saying, ‘Hey, return to Obama years’ is that there are many Americans who were getting behind in those years, too, and they’re pissed off. And so, if you say, I’m going to revert, that loses to that group of people. There are so many Americans who just don’t think their institutions are working for him at all, and Joe Biden’s’s weakness is he represents those institutions. I’m endorsing Joe. We need Joe to beat Trump. But we’ll have a much better chance of that if Joe recognizes that our institutions have been failing many Americans for a long time.”
Obama’s State of Delusion ... OR JUST ANOTHER "Hope & Change" HOAX?
”The delusional character of Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday—presenting an America of rising living standards and a booming economy, capped by his declaration that the “shadow of crisis has passed”—is perhaps matched only in its presentation by the media and supporters of the Democratic Party.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
“The general tone was set by the New York Times in its lead editorial on Wednesday, which described the speech as a “simple, dramatic message about economic fairness, about the fact that the well-off—the top earners, the big banks, Silicon Valley—have done just great, while middle and working classes remain dead in the water.”
OBAMANOMICS:
The report observes that while the wealth of the world’s 80 richest people doubled between 2009 and 2014, the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population (3.5 billion people) was lower in 2014 than it was in 2009.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
In 2010, it took 388 billionaires to match the wealth of the bottom half of the earth’s population; by 2013, the figure had fallen to just 92 billionaires. It fell to 80 in 2014.
THE OBAMA ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
“The goal of the Obama administration, working with the Republicans and local governments, is to roll back the living conditions of the vast majority of the population to levels not seen since the 19th century, prior to the advent of the eight-hour day, child labor laws, comprehensive public education, pensions, health benefits, workplace health and safety regulations, etc.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
“In response to the ruthless assault of the financial oligarchy, spearheaded by Obama, the working class must advance, no less ruthlessly, its own policy.”
New Federal Reserve report
US median income has plunged, inequality has grown in Obama “recovery”
The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.
New Federal Reserve report
US median income has plunged, inequality has grown in Obama “recovery”
The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.
The report makes clear that the drop in a typical household’s income was not merely the result of what is referred to as the 2008 recession, which officially lasted only 18 months, through June 2009. Much of the decline in workers’ incomes occurred during the so-called “economic recovery” presided over by the Obama administration.
In the three years between 2010 and 2013, the annual income of a typical household actually fell by 5 percent.
The Fed report exposes as a fraud the efforts of the Obama administration to present itself as a defender of the “middle class”. It has systematically pursued policies to redistribute wealth from the bottom to the very top of the income ladder. These include the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks, near-zero interest rates to drive up the stock market, and austerity measures and wage cutting to lift corporate profits and CEO pay to record highs.
The Federal Reserve data, based on in-person interviews, show a far larger decline in the median income of American households than indicated by earlier figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.
In line with the figures on household income, the report shows an ever-growing concentration of wealth among the richest households. The Fed’s summary of its data notes that “the wealth share of the top 3 percent climbed from 44.8 percent in 1989 to 51.8 percent in 2007 and 54.4 percent in 2013,” while the wealth of the “next 7 highest percent of families changed very little.”
The report states that “the rising wealth share of the top 3 percent of families is mirrored by the declining share of wealth held by the bottom 90 percent,” which fell from 33.2 percent in 1989 to 24.7 percent in 2013.
The ongoing impoverishment of the population is an indictment of capitalism. There has been no genuine recovery from the Wall Street crash of 2008, only a further plundering of the economy by the financial aristocracy. The crisis precipitated by the rapacious, criminal practices of the bankers and hedge fund speculators has been used to restructure the economy to the benefit of the rich at the expense of everyone else.
Decent-paying jobs have been wiped out and replaced by low-wage, part-time and temporary jobs, with little or no benefits. Pensions and health benefits have come under savage attack, as seen in the bankruptcy of Detroit.
Not surprisingly, the Fed report has been buried by the American media, confined to the inside pages of the major newspapers.
Measured in 2013 dollars, a typical household received an income of $53,100 in 2007. By 2010, this had fallen to $49,000. It hit $46,700 by 2013. At the same time, the average income for the wealthiest tenth of families grew by ten percent.
While median income fell between 2010 and 2013, mean (average) income grew, from $84,100 to $87,200. The report noted that, “the decline in median income coupled with the rise in mean income is consistent with a widening income distribution during this period.”
For the poorest households, the drop in income has been even more dramatic. Among the bottom quarter of households, mean income fell a full 10 percent between 2010 and 2013.
The report reveals other aspects of the social crisis. The share of young families burdened by education debt nearly doubled, from 22.4 percent to 38.8 percent, between 2001 and 2013. The share of young families with more than $100,000 in debt has grown nearly tenfold, from 0.6 percent to 5.6 percent.
These statistics reflect both a historic and insoluble crisis of the profit system and the brutal policies of the American ruling class, which is carrying out a relentless assault on working people and preparing to go even further by dismantling bedrock social programs such as Medicare and Social Security. The data undercuts the endless talk of “partisan gridlock” in Washington and the media presentation of a political system paralyzed by irreconcilable differences between the Democratic and Republican parties.
There has, in fact, been a seamless continuity between the Bush and Obama administrations in the pursuit of reactionary policies of war abroad and class war at home. The two parties have worked hand in glove to make the working class pay for the crisis of the capitalist system.
The Federal Reserve has itself played a critical role in the growth of social inequality in the US. The bailout of the banks, estimated at $7 trillion, has been followed by six years of virtually free money for the banks.
Every facet of American life is dominated by the immense concentration of wealth at the very top of society. The grotesque levels of wealth amassed by the parasites and criminals who dominate American business, and the flaunting of their fortunes before tens of millions struggling to pay their bills and keep from falling into destitution, are fueling the growth of social anger. This anger will increasingly be directed against the entire economic and political system.
The figures released by the Fed reflect a society riven by class divisions that must inevitably trigger social upheavals. The explosive state of social relations is itself a major factor in the endless recourse by the Obama administration to military aggression and war, which serve to deflect internal tensions outward.
The growth of inequality likewise underlies the relentless attack on democratic rights in the US, including the massive domestic spying exposed by Edward Snowden and the use of militarized police to crack down on social opposition, as seen most recently in Ferguson, Missouri.
Democrats unite with Trump to enact massive corporate bailout
In a celebration of bipartisan unity, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on Friday approved by voice vote an unprecedented $2.2 trillion bill to bail out the nation’s corporations and banks, while providing limited and temporary aid to workers hit by the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The House vote followed Wednesday night's 96-0 approval of the measure by the Republican-controlled Senate. President Trump, who had lobbied furiously for the bill, signed it into law only a few hours after it passed the House just after 1:30 p.m.
The $2.2 trillion estimated cost of the bill, equal to more than half of the entire federal budget and far in excess of the $700 billion bank bailout bill passed in 2008, substantially underestimates the actual scale of the government handout to big business. The biggest single slice of the bill, $454 billion to finance guaranteed loans to big corporations, is designed to be leveraged by the Federal Reserve Board into some $4.5 trillion in loans and subsidies.
This amounts to a virtually unlimited backstop for the country's corporate and financial aristocracy, with no real strings attached. The provisions that provide stop-gap assistance to workers who are being laid off in the millions or being ordered to work without any protection against the deadly virus are designed to head off an eruption of class conflict in the short-term, so that the ruling class can buy time and prepare a counteroffensive to place the full cost of the corporate bailout on the backs of the working class. The bill's passage coincides with Trump's push to “open up” the country and force workers back into the plants and workplaces to resume pumping out profits for big business.
The Senate bill was supported by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the two remaining candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, who shelved his “socialist” pretensions to praise the measure as a boon to working people. There was no effort by the “progressive” allies of Sanders in the House, including Democratic Socialists of America members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, to actually oppose the bill.
Ocasio-Cortez railed against the bill during a four-hour floor debate Friday morning, but she failed to follow through with a threat to stall passage of the measure by demanding a roll-call vote. It was a right-wing Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, who sought to delay passage by opposing a voice vote and formally demanding a recorded vote.
With the House in recess, the White House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had agreed that they would avoid requiring House members to appear in person to cast votes, under conditions of lockdowns and travel restrictions in large parts of the country and the rapid spread of COVID-19, and seek instead to get the bill approved by unanimous consent. That would have required only a few representatives to be in attendance.
Massie, however, refused to back down, forcing a quorum call to determine whether more than half of the chamber's 435 members were on hand—as they were. He was, however, unable to get a single House member to back his demand for a roll-call vote, allowing the House leadership to push the bill through on a voice vote. There were only a few scattered “nays” amidst the overwhelming chorus of “ayes.”
Following the vote, Pelosi and McCarthy appeared side by side to hail the passage of the bill, cynically casting it as a humanitarian lifeline to ordinary Americans. Pelosi quoted Pope Francis in praising the measure.
The bill includes two main provisions providing aid to workers. It allocates $300 billion for direct cash payments to more than 150 million households. Those eligible, who do not include undocumented workers, will receive $1,200 per adult or $2,400 per couple, plus an additional $500 for each child. This is a one-time subsidy.
In addition, the bill allocates $250 billion to extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks and add $600 per week to the benefits provided by the states. This federal supplement is to end in early August for workers filing claims this week. The bill also makes freelance and gig workers eligible for the same unemployment benefits.
Some $500 billion is to be distributed to defray the costs of fighting the coronavirus epidemic and other social needs. That sum includes $207 billion for state, local and tribal governments, school districts and public transit agencies; $130 billion for hospitals and public health facilities and $45 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Only $16 billion is set aside for hospitals to procure personal protective equipment and ventilators.
The vast bulk of the bill is a massive handout to business, with most of the money by far going to big corporations. In addition to the $454 billion Treasury backstop for Fed loans and grants to corporations, the bill provides $46 billion in targeted loans from the Treasury Department, mainly to the commercial airline industry, with $17 billion carved out for Boeing.
It sets aside $350 billion in loans and aid to small businesses, which are defined as enterprises with up to 500 employees. This could include multi-billion-dollar hedge funds and other financial firms.
There is also $50 billion for an “employee retention tax credit” to companies that keep their employees on the payroll.
There are other windfalls to business buried in the more than 800 pages of the legislation. One that could directly benefit Trump or his associates is the full restoration to the real estate sector of a huge tax break for interest costs and operating losses that was limited by the 2017 tax overhaul.
Restrictions imposed on corporations receiving government aid are largely nullified by caveats. There is a provision barring businesses receiving loans from cutting their employment levels until September 30. However, this is hedged with the phrase “to the extent practicable.”
Corporate recipients are also barred from raising dividends or carrying out stock buybacks to further enrich executives and big investors. This provision, however, can be waived by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a multi-millionaire and former CEO of OneWest Bank, where he was sued for illegal home foreclosures.
The bill sets the precedent for the unlimited plundering of social resources to prop up the corporate oligarchy, while providing entirely inadequate assistance to working people devastated by the health and economic impact of a pandemic that could have been either minimized or stopped in its tracks. Multiple advance warnings by health experts were ignored, no preparations for such a crisis were made, and the virus was not taken seriously by the government when it erupted in China.
The bipartisan bill does nothing to mobilize the immense power of technology and industry in a planned and coordinated manner to quickly produce and distribute the ventilators, masks and PPE material needed to save lives, and to construct the ICU units and hospitals and train the staff needed to prevent the health care system from being completely inundated.
It does not provide for the mass testing, contact tracing and extended social distancing needed to contain and defeat the disease. Nor does it order the shutdown of all workplaces and factories not providing essential services, with no loss in income for the workers, and safe conditions under medical supervision for those required to work.
These are demands that workers must raise, along with free and equal care for all those affected by the virus and a moratorium on rent, mortgage payments and personal loan payments for the duration of the crisis.
These critical needs at every point collide with the priorities of the profit system and private ownership of the means of production. The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated all over the world the life-and-death need for the working class to put an end to capitalism and replace it with socialism.
Biden staggers toward the White House
President-elect Joe Biden gave a 15-minute nationally televised speech Monday night to mark the occasion of his official victory in the Electoral College.
It is unprecedented for a president-elect to make a speech on such an occasion. For most of modern American history, the vote in the Electoral College—comprised of the electors appointed through the popular vote in the separate states—has been fairly routine. This began to change with the election in 2000, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore and would have lost the vote in the Electoral College as well if the Supreme Court had not intervened to halt the recounting of votes in Florida. In the 2016 elections, Trump lost the popular vote by nearly three million but was able to secure an Electoral College victory due to the distribution of his vote in the states.
The present situation goes far beyond what happened in 2000. Here, Trump, who was massively defeated in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, is engaged in an ongoing effort to nullify the election and overturn the results.
Biden began his remarks by hailing the Electoral College vote as a completion of the election process and a major victory for democracy. “The will of the people prevailed,” he said. “The democracy pushed, tested, threatened, proved to be resilient, true and strong.”
If it was Biden’s intention to reassert confidence in American democracy, however, not only his demeanor but his words proved the opposite.
First, his speech was characterized by its extreme defensiveness. If American democracy is so strong, why does the candidate who won the election by seven million votes have to make a speech to defend the legitimacy of his victory and his coming administration?
Second, Biden’s own account of the process that led to the vote in the Electoral College underscored not the strength and resiliency but the extreme fragility of what remains of democratic forms of rule.
Biden noted that the Trump campaign has sought to bully and intimidate election officials and ordinary election workers around the country. “It was truly remarkable because so many of these patriotic Americans were subject to so much enormous political pressure, verbal abuse, even threats of physical violence,” he said. “We owe these public servants a debt of gratitude,” he said. “Our democracy survived because of them.”
The implication is that, if it were not for a handful of election officials, the effort by Trump to overturn the elections would have been successful.
Biden then referred to Trump’s unprecedented effort to overturn the election results through legal challenges, heard by more than 80 judges at the state and federal level, including the US Supreme Court. The outcome, he said, proved the “integrity of our judicial system.”
If Trump was relying on the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of the election, however, it was because of its role in handing the election to Bush in 2000. Indeed, Trump has relied on the arguments advanced by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at the time—that the population does not have the right to vote for president—in his own efforts to overturn the results two decades later.
Biden’s criticism of Trump was itself tentative and evasive. He noted that Trump led an effort to “wipe out the votes of more than 20 million Americans” and that this position was “so extreme, we’ve never seen it before, a position that refused to respect the will of the people, the rule of law, and to honor the Constitution.”
In a manner ingrained in the culture of American bourgeois politics, Biden avoided bluntly stating the obvious: The president of the United States has been engaged in an ongoing fascistic conspiracy to establish a personalist dictatorship.
Nor did Biden dwell on the fact that the Republican Party has been complicit in all of this. While referring to the “stunning” decision of 17 Republican attorneys general and 126 Republican members of Congress to support a Texas lawsuit that asked the US Supreme Court to overturn the election, Biden moved on to declare that he was “pleased” by “the number of my former Republican colleagues in the Senate who have acknowledged already the results of the Electoral College.”
“I’m convinced,” Biden said, “we can work together for the good of the nation on many subjects.” It was necessary, he added, to “lower the temperature.” That is, a future Biden administration will collaborate closely with the party that has been involved in a conspiracy to overturn his own election victory.
While Biden claimed that his Electoral College victory would convince congressional Republicans to acknowledge the result of the vote, Trump and his closest aides and a large section of Republican officials continue their refusal to concede. Trump declared even before the day’s proceedings were completed that his fight to stay in office was not over. His top fascist White House aide, Stephen Miller, is proposing to name “alternate electors” in the battleground states who would cast entirely illegal ballots for the president.
Biden concluded his speech with a brief reference to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 300,000 people in the United States. “My heart goes out to each of you,” he declared, “who have fallen on hard times through no fault of your own.” He did not, however, suggest that anything had to be done about the catastrophe that is spreading throughout the country. Everything will be solved with his modified version of the Catholic Catechism: “Where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is darkness, light.”
While Biden preaches “unity,” the reality is that social tensions in the United States have reached a point where they are short-circuiting the safety switches of democracy. A substantial section of the American ruling class is turning to dictatorship.
The causes lie not in Trump himself. He is but an instrument and expression of a deeper disease. Even if Trump is not successful now, the precedent has been set. And he is elaborating a “stab in the back” theory that the election was stolen as the basis for mobilizing fascistic forces as the shock troops of the financial oligarchy.
Biden’s comments were followed by the remarks of the talking heads in the media who counseled that Republicans should “do the right thing” and accept defeat, as if what is involved is a children’s game and not an attempt to overturn democratic forms of rule.
As for Biden himself, wheezing and coughing throughout his remarks, he seemed an apt symbol of the crisis that he sought desperately to cover over. He is presently assembling a right-wing administration, staffed with proven defenders of the military-intelligence apparatus and the ruling class. It would be the height of folly to expect such a party and such a government to defend democratic rights against the fascist threat represented by Trump.
The principal concern of the Democrats is the growth of opposition to the profit system, deepening economic and social inequality, and the homicidal back-to-work and back-to-school campaign being waged by the entire political establishment and both corporate-controlled parties.
American democracy is not “true and strong;” it is at death’s door. The defense of democratic rights is inextricably connected to the independent political mobilization of the working class against capitalism and the entire rotting edifice of bourgeois rule.
Bipartisan US “relief” bill stiffs workers and unemployed, gives billions more to business
Late Sunday night, congressional leaders from both parties signaled their acceptance of a roughly $900 billion coronavirus relief bill that includes generous handouts to large companies while leaving jobless workers and their families with crumbs. The bill is expected to pass both the House and Senate by Monday afternoon and be attached to a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill. President Donald Trump has signaled his intention to sign the bill into law.
The package, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called a “strong shot in the arm,” does nowhere near enough to make whole the over 10 million people who have lost their jobs since March and the millions whose hours or wages have been reduced.
The bill does not provide health insurance for the estimated 15 million who have lost it during the pandemic. It will not house the over 162,000 who have been evicted during the pandemic, nor does it provide enough money to cover the nearly $6,000 in average back rent owed by some 12 million people, according to Moody’s analytics.
It’s been nearly nine months since congress passed the CARES Act, a windfall for the financial oligarchy that provided about $6 trillion in low-interest loans and cash subsidies to major banks and corporations, while providing limited relief for the general population in the form of a $1,200 stimulus check for those earning under $75,000, limited protection against eviction, and a $600 weekly federal unemployment benefit.
The new bill slashes the federal supplemental jobless benefit to only $300 a week and cuts the duration of the program to a mere 11 weeks. It reduces the one-time stimulus check to $600 from the CARES Act’s $1,200.
A temporary holdup in the bill’s passage was ironed out over the weekend after a deal was struck between Republican Senator Pat Toomey and the Democrats over several Federal Reserve programs created in the CARES Act that were set to expire at the end of the year. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had already ended the programs on his own, but the language Toomey included in the package would have required congressional approval to restart the programs in case another crisis for the financial oligarchy arose that required additional billions in immediate funds.
The Democrats demanded the removal of the proposed check on the supposed “independence of the Fed,” a fiction used to conceal the fact that the US central bank is an instrument of the corporate-financial oligarchy and does its bidding.
The Democrats had little problem abandoning federal aid to cash-starved states and cities, money for food programs under conditions of mass hunger, serious money for COVID-19 testing, tracing and PPE, and other desperately needed social funding they had included in the so-called Heroes Act passed by the House in May. But on the issue of unlimited Fed money to prop up the financial markets, they dug in their heels and refused to sign onto the deal until Toomey backed down.
In a tweet Sunday, Schumer boasted that Toomey had “dropped his dangerous language tying the Fed’s hands.”
While the text of the bill has yet to be released, it undoubtedly includes, largely buried in the fine print, innumerable gifts for the politically-connected and well-off. One such boon already unearthed is the inclusion of the so-called “three martini lunch” provision, which allows businesses, previously allowed to deduct 50 percent of meal expenses from their federal taxes, to increase the tax write-off to 100 percent. Unnamed tax experts assured the Washington Post that the handout should not exceed “a few billion dollars a year.”
Another provision included in previous summaries of the bill allows “intelligence and defense contractors to have flexible contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic.” While the precise meaning of this provision remains unclear, it is no doubt a gift to large defense industry corporations and has nothing to do with providing vaccines, food or housing to millions of people in need.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shot down two packages earlier this year presented by the White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that contained some funding for state and local governments, compared to the zero dollars in the current package.
The bipartisan bill does not include a liability shield for corporations and businesses that infect their workers and customers with the coronavirus, which had been a central demand of Senate Republicans. However, as Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged in a speech earlier this month, 38 states have already passed such legislation.
The largest chunk of the package, $284 billion, will be dedicated to refunding the misnamed Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Ostensibly created to provide low-interest loans that could be turned into grants to allow small businesses to continue paying their employees, in reality large businesses were handed millions in loans, consuming a disproportionate share of the funding, untold thousands of small businesses received nothing, and Wall Street banks pocketed billions in loan fees.
Over 100,000 legitimate small businesses, many of which were unable to navigate the paperwork or had their PPP loan applications rejected, have shut down permanently since March. One business that was able to take advantage of the PPP, according to a report earlier this year by the New York Post, was a political consulting group co-owned by “progressive” Representative Ilhan Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, which was granted a $134,800 loan. In addition to the six-figure loan, the E Street Group LLC was the beneficiary of $500,000 in Economic Injury Disaster Loans.
Other major provisions of the bill include:
- $20 billion for the purchase of vaccines along with $8 billion for vaccine distribution and $20 billion to assist states with testing and contact tracing.
- $45 billion for transportation, including $14 billion for transit systems, $10 billion for highways, $2 billion for buses, $2 billion for airports and $1 billion for Amtrak.
- $16 billion for major US airlines, which already received $25 billion from the CARES Act and proceeded to lay off some 90,000 workers. The new money reportedly comes with a stipulation that airlines will have to return 32,000 furloughed workers.
- $1.4 billion in new funding for Trump’s border wall, including “new border security technology.”
The miserably inadequate level of social assistance in the bill is already arousing popular anger. On social media, one jobless worker wrote a message to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the supposed leaders of the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party, declaring: “$600 stimulus. Thanks for not delivering on what you’ve promised for 8 months. Don’t tell us you care, you don’t.”
One Twitter user wrote, “congress has agreed to a $900 billion stimulus deal & Americans that [are] struggling [are] only getting a one time check of $600… $600 now and an eviction notice the next month. Happy Holidays Everyone!”
Another sardonically added, “thank you congress for finally passing a $600 stimulus check that will go directly to landlords.”
As with the CARES Act, the $600 checks will not be sent to adult dependents, meaning millions of college students won’t be receiving them. Immigrants without a Social Security number are also not eligible to receive checks. Federal unemployment benefits that some 12 million people are using through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation programs have been extended for only 11 weeks, as opposed to the 16 weeks previously announced, and at only $300 a week.
A mere $25 billion is slated for rental assistance, and it is not known how much of this will actually go to tenants, who collectively owe some $70 billion in back rent, according to Moody’s.
A renewed eviction moratorium is reportedly in the bill. However, it appears to be only a one-month extension, ending on January 31, leaving up to 20 million people facing eviction.
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