GET THIS BOOK!
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,”
$14 Million: Campaign Smashes Online Fundraising Records for Donald Trump’s Birthday
1:23
President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee announced Monday they had raised $14 million in online fundraising in just 24-hours on the president’s birthday.
“Quite a birthday gift for Donald Trump yesterday!” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale wrote on social media, sharing the numbers from a Fox News report. “Biggest single-day ONLINE fundraising total ever – $14 million.”
Trump turned 74 on Sunday.
Quite a birthday gift for @realDonaldTrump yesterday!
Biggest single-day ONLINE fundraising total ever - $14 million.
That’s grassroots support that Sleepy @JoeBiden can only dream of.
The enthusiasm gap is real and it is wide!#MakeAmericaGreatAgain! foxnews.com/politics/rnc-t …
The Trump Make America Great Again Committee (TMAGAC) also participated in the fundraising effort.
The Biden campaign continues struggling to close the funding gap with President Trump.
Biden and the Democratic National Committee raised more than $60 million in April but were bested by the Trump campaign and the RNC which raised $61.7 million in the same month.
Republicans have over $255 million in cash on hand, nearly $187 million more than Biden and the DNC.
“That’s grassroots support that Sleepy @JoeBiden can only dream of,” Parscale wrote. “The enthusiasm gap is real and it is wide!”
Trump to Pelosi: I’ll Help GOP Governors If You Cut
Taxes on Rich
'Our middle class is dying': Tucker Carlson
blames 'advisers' in Trump orbit for 'tidal wave' of immigration
do with what advocates of immigration claim immigration is
for," added Carlson. "These visas do not
improve American society in any way.
We have no moral obligation to give
them. There is no mention of guest
workers on the Statue of Liberty."
Continental Materials Corporation is majority owned by the family of Ronald Gidwitz, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Belgium. During the 2016 election campaign, Gidwitz was the Trump campaign's Illinois finance chair. The heating and cooling company, which had sales of more than $100 million last year, got a $5.5 million loan at 1% interest. That’s much larger than the typical PPP loan, which is usually just over $200,000.
Trump to Pelosi: I’ll Help GOP Governors If You Cut
Taxes on Rich
Photo: Doug Mills/Pool via Bloomberg/Getty
Images
More than 36 million
Americans have lost their jobs since March. Unemployment in the
United States is now (almost certainly) above 20 percent. The Republican chairman of the Federal Reserve says that further
stimulus spending is required to avert “long-term economic damage” and hasten the onset of recovery. Across the country, GOP
governors are calling on Congress to approve (at least) $500 billion in fiscal aid to states, warning that in the absence of such support, they will be forced
to make draconian cutbacks to public investment and employment, thereby
deepening the recession. All historical evidence suggests that
if the economy is not rebounding strongly by Election Day, undecided voters
will swing against the incumbent president and his party.
Yet Donald Trump and
the congressional GOP have apparently convinced themselves that enacting any further stimulus
somehow qualifies as a gift to Democrats, and including aid to states in such a
stimulus would constitute an act of historic generosity. Or at least the White
House believes that it can convince Nancy Pelosi to believe such absurdities.
Last week, the Trump
administration announced that it had no interest in passing another coronavirus
relief package this month. After all, Congress
had already pumped roughly $3 trillion into the coffers of corporations, small
businesses, and households, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow reasoned.
And now that states were beginning to reopen their economies, it wasn’t clear
that any further federal largesse would be needed.
It’s hard to say
whether this argument was offered in earnest, or merely as a negotiating
tactic. Either way, it is indicative of the GOP’s ideological delusions. All
available evidence — both domestic and international — suggests that you cannot restore economic normality in the
middle of an uncontained pandemic by revoking formal shutdown orders. As long
as people know that eating in a restaurant means accepting a heightened risk of
contracting a deadly virus, demand for dining out will remain at a fraction of
what it was four months ago.
In case you were
wondering how the reopening is going down south. pic.twitter.com/xneL4Pelci
The same can be said
for air travel, retail shopping, and a whole host of other consumer goods and
services. And fewer flights and commuters means tepid demand for the fossil
fuels that power the economies of red petro-states. Meanwhile, even when the public-health threat posed by the
coronavirus is fully eliminated, Americans are unlikely to resume their old
consumption patterns — both because the trauma of the present economic shock is
all-but certain to increase savings rates, and because many households and
firms will need to devote a higher share of income to their accumulated private
debts (assuming the federal government does not step in and enact a debt
jubilee). The private sector is not going to heal itself, and the longer
congressional Republicans delay in dispensing further aid, the less likely a
preelection recovery becomes. Even as a tactical pretense, the GOP’s stalling
on new stimulus is indicative of either self-delusion or a privileging of
conservative orthodoxy over political self-interest (which arguably amounts to
the same thing).
Regardless, now that
last week’s (bizarre) market rally has begun to
fade, Republicans seem ready to concede the necessity of congressional action.
But the White House still doesn’t seem to understand that, electorally, it
needs stimulus much more than Democrats do. In fact, according to a new report
from the Washington Post, the president
believes that he is in a position to offer Nancy Pelosi a tiny fraction of her
desired fiscal aid to states — a policy objective endorsed by just about every
GOP governor in the country — in exchange for regressive tax cuts and liability
reforms that just about every Democrat in Congress opposes:
White House officials have privately signaled that they are
willing to provide tens of billions of dollars in relief to states as part of a
bipartisan deal with Democrats in the coming weeks, despite President Trump’s
reluctance and strong opposition from conservative groups, according to seven
people familiar with the internal deliberations who were granted anonymity to
discuss the matter.
Although that position is likely to anger some Republicans, who
have warned that Democrats want “blue state bailouts,” many White House
officials now believe that providing new funding to states to deal with
challenges related to the coronavirus will be necessary if they want to secure
their own priorities, such as tax breaks and liability protections for businesses, the people said …
Two White House officials said they have made it clear to
business leaders and conservative allies in recent days that Trump is “not
willing to provide a blank check” to states, but is “open” to negotiating
whether he can win concessions from Democrats on taxes in exchange for an
influx of cash — and they have told conservative leaders that they will make
sure any new cash is directed only toward problems sparked by the pandemic. An
unveiling of the White House’s tax proposals is expected in the coming days.
House
Democrats’ latest coronavirus relief bill allocates nearly $1 trillion in fiscal aid to states and cities.
As already mentioned, Republican governors have suggested that at least $500
billion in such aid is warranted. It’s insane that “not forcing states to slash
jobs and public services in the middle of a historic economic crisis for
literally no reason” is considered an exclusively Democratic objective. But
even if it made sense to describe aid to states as a concession to liberals,
offering them “tens of billions” in many-strings-attached funding would be a joke.
By contrast, the concessions the White House is demanding — a capital gains tax
cut for the Americans least harmed by the present crisis, and legal immunity for employers who operate unsafe workplaces — are not only wholly partisan demands, but ones
exceptionally distasteful to the Democratic Party’s left wing. Trump’s proposal
is analogous to Pelosi offering to support a small increase in aid to small
businesses in exchange for a federal repeal of right-to-work laws and a pathway
to citizenship for the undocumented.
In my view, Democrats
should be prepared to make some distasteful concessions to Trump
if doing so allows them to secure $1 trillion in unconditional aid to states,
the indefinite extension of enhanced unemployment benefits, hazard pay for
front-line workers, monthly cash support for households, and other measures
that would dramatically soften the economic blows that are coming. But
Democrats can’t let the GOP’s delusions become contagious. Pelosi must
understand that her party has all the leverage here. If Congress does nothing —
and enhanced unemployment benefits expire in July, while state governments
liquidate their rainy-day funds — millions of ordinary Americans will suffer;
but so will Donald Trump’s campaign. Politically, Democrats don’t need any kind of deal, let alone
a wildly unbalanced one. If the president would rather seek reelection in a
historic depression than make workers and cities whole, Pelosi should grant him
that concession.
Fox News host Tucker
Carlson ripped some within President Trump's "orbit" for attempting
to place corporate interests ahead of American workers' welfare during the
coronavirus pandemic.
On his Tuesday night
show, Carlson critiqued Trump advisers, who he alleges crafted a temporary
suspension of immigration without addressing key concerns of the working class.
"The president is
worried about preserving American jobs," Carlson said.
"Unfortunately, and this seems to be the key, some in his orbit are not as
concerned. Their main worry is making donors happy. And if there's one thing
that donors love always, it's cheap employees. Yes, our middle class is dying
at a faster clip than ever before."
Carlson said the
suspension doesn't address the hundreds of thousands of temporary and guest
workers who vie with Americans for industrial and agricultural jobs.
The Fox News host
claimed the suspension was written by out-of-touch staff members who are
"more worried about what their friends think" of the immigration
measures instead of protecting the jobs of citizens.
Carlson noted the
suspension does not apply to a massive section of immigrants who fight with
Americans for working-class jobs.
"The new
moratorium on immigration will last for 60 days," Carlson said. "The
ban will apply only to individuals seeking permanent residency into this
country."
Carlson said Trump's
ban, which could be extended after the two-month period ends, does not apply to
hundreds of thousands of temporary and guest workers who vie with Americans for
industrial and agricultural jobs.
"The purpose of this tidal wave of
immigration has nothing to
do with what advocates of immigration claim immigration is
for," added Carlson. "These visas do not
improve American society in any way.
We have no moral obligation to give
them. There is no mention of guest
workers on the Statue of Liberty."
“Our entire crony capitalist system,
Democrat and Republican alike, has become a
kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This
is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” --- Karen
McQuillan
While many small businesses haven't been able to get one of the
federal government's Paycheck Protection Program loans, a Chicago company with
close ties to the White House has.
Continental Materials Corporation is majority owned by the family of Ronald Gidwitz, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Belgium. During the 2016 election campaign, Gidwitz was the Trump campaign's Illinois finance chair. The heating and cooling company, which had sales of more than $100 million last year, got a $5.5 million loan at 1% interest. That’s much larger than the typical PPP loan, which is usually just over $200,000.
GET THIS BOOK!
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American
Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,”
Bailout of US corporations
expands while workers see little relief
Bailout of US corporations
expands while workers see little relief
Two weeks after the passage of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus
pandemic corporate bailout bill, grotesquely misnamed the CARES Act, it is
clear that it was only the initial shot in the funneling of countless trillions
of dollars to the corporate-financial aristocracy that rules America.
While billions have already flowed to the corporations and
banks, the limited provisions of the act that were touted by both parties as a
boon to working people hit by the shutdown of much of the economy have yet to
kick in, and for millions they likely never will.
The act includes $454 billion as a Treasury backstop to
enable the Federal Reserve to provide some $4 trillion in cheap loans
to major corporations and banks, meaning the real scale of the
bailout—thus far—is more than $6 trillion.
The vast bulk of the money allocated goes to covering any losses
suffered by major corporations and fueling a new surge in the stock market.
That it has succeeded, at least for the present, in lifting the markets is seen
in more than 10 percent surge in the Dow over the past several trading days.
This has occurred in the midst of an ever-rising toll of death and suffering
from the pandemic and grim projections by bankers and economists of a
depression-level contraction in the economy and a catastrophic growth of
unemployment.
The expanding scale of the bailout and euphoria on the financial
markets, alongside the economic and social catastrophe facing the broad mass of
the population, demonstrates that the interests of the ruling class and those
of the working class are diametrically opposed. The response of the
ruling elite and its two political parties to the crisis has from the onset
been single-mindedly focused on defending the economic interests of corporate-financial
oligarchy, no matter the cost in human life.
In just the last several weeks, the Federal Reserve Board has
announced at least 12 major measures to rescue the financial markets and
backstop big business. These include:
· Two emergency interest rate cuts, bringing the benchmark lending
rate back down to near-zero
· A pledge to purchase at least $500 billion in Treasury
securities and $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities and to continue the
program for “as long as needed”
· Nearly unlimited sums in short-term loans to 25 large financial
institutions that control the market for repurchase agreements, or repos,
including $1.5 trillion in the days following the announcement
· Foreign exchange swap lines, the purchase of short-term loans to
US corporations in the commercial paper market, short-term loans to 24 large
financial institutions, and, for the first time ever, direct purchases of
corporate bonds and direct loans to corporations.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Jean Boivin, head of BlackRock Investment
Institute, as saying, “The amount of measures taken in a short amount of time
is surreal and unprecedented.”
“It’s kind of crazy how they’ve almost done as much in this week
as they did in several months in 2008,” JPMorgan’s chief US economist Michael
Feroli said last month. “Now they do have the advantage of just being able to
dust off [former Fed Chairman] Bernanke’s playbook.”
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell gave a blanket
guarantee of unlimited funds to corporate
America, telling the “Today” show this week,
“Where credit is not flowing, we have the
ability in this unique circumstance to step in
and provide those loans.”
Now both the Trump administration and the Democrats have
committed to provide an additional $250 billion to the so-called “Paycheck
Protection Program.” That is the Orwellian name given by the two parties to the
$350 billion program ostensibly established to provide government-backed loans
to small businesses, many of which face bankruptcy as a result of the shutdown
of much of the economy, and save the jobs of their workers over the next eight weeks. (That this is
farcically inadequate, even if implemented in full, in the midst of the
greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, is self-evident).
The program is designed to provide a windfall for the big banks,
which actually extend and administer the loans that are backed by the Small
Business Administration (SBA). This ensures that Wall Street receives billions
of dollars in fees and other charges.
On the eve of the official launching of the program last Friday,
the law was amended, under pressure from the banks, to double the interest rate
from 0.5 percent to 1.0 percent. Now the banks are demanding that the Fed buy
any loans they extend to small businesses so as to remove them from their
balance sheets. This will allow them to more freely engage in financial
speculation and parasitic activities such as stock buybacks.
Moreover, the great bulk of the money will go not to mom-and-pop
groceries, gas stations or eateries, but rather to large corporations that are
included in the program. Thus, for example, the program was amended to include
billion-dollar restaurant and hotel chains.
Small businesses desperate for cash are finding it difficult if
not impossible to actually find lenders who will provide the loans, even if
their applications are approved by the SBA. Banks, intent on maximizing
profits, are turning down applications right and left.
Citigroup is refusing to participate. Bank of America is not
accepting applications from companies that have borrowed from other banks.
Wells Fargo says it has already reached “capacity.”
Hundreds of thousands of businesses have applied under the
program, but to date only a handful have received any money.
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are pressing the Trump
administration to expand the $50 billion bailout of the airlines included in
the CARES Act. This is, supposedly, another “jobs-saving” effort. Delta, for
its part, has already laid off thousands of its employees.
There are no real restrictions in the law on how the
corporations use the money they are given by the government. No one should
doubt that the airline carriers, which spent some $16 billion over the past
three years to purchase their own stock—in order to further enrich their top
executives and major investors by driving up the stock price—will use their
bailout money to do more of the same.
The Trump administration, for its part, is reportedly
considering such additional “stimulus” measures as a payroll tax cut—which
would starve Social Security of funding—a capital gains tax cut, 50-year
Treasury bonds and a waiver that would relieve businesses of liability for
employees who contract the coronavirus on the job.
Trump has moved to negate even the token congressional oversight
of the bailout program mandated in the law. On Monday, he named a White House
lawyer and Trump loyalist, Brian Miller, as inspector general of the Treasury
Department’s $350 billion small business (“Payroll Protection Program”), and on
Tuesday he removed Glenn Fine as head of the Pandemic Response Accountability
Committee, tasked with monitoring the entire $2.2 trillion program. Trump
replaced him with a “senior policy adviser” at US Customs and Border Protection,
Jason Abend.
Workers are finding that the promised relief from the bailout
law—which accounts for only a small fraction of the total cost of the
measure—is uncertain if not entirely illusory.
The New York Times reported Monday that many Americans will not receive the
promised relief check of $1,200, plus $500 for each child, until August or
September. As many as 10 million low-income, childless adults who are eligible
for the stimulus payment program may receive nothing because they have not filed
tax returns. Millions more, including undocumented workers, prisoners, students
and adult dependents are excluded.
As for the $250 billion expanded jobless benefit part of the
law, which is supposed to extend state benefits for 13 weeks and add $600 a
week in federal funds for up to four months, workers are finding it all but
impossible to apply. Multiple state unemployment websites have crashed under
the crush of millions of applicants, and scenes of hundreds of workers lining
up, in the midst of a pandemic lockdown, to apply in person are proliferating
around the country.
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