The COVID Bailout of State and Local Governments
Was Unnecessary
Posted By: Ketchuplover, 10/14/2023 8:51:53 PM
Two years after Congress authorized a hugely expensive bailout of state and local governments as part of a COVID-era emergency spending bill, most of the money still hadn't been spent. Perhaps the bailout wasn't even needed in the first place? In a new report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that states (including Washington, D.C.) had spent just 45 percent of the funding they had received through the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program, a $350 billion line item within the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which passed in March 2021. Local governments had reported spending just 38 percent of their funds received through the same program.
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Two years after Congress authorized a hugely expensive bailout of state and local governments as part of a COVID-era emergency spending bill, most of the money still hadn't been spent.
Perhaps the bailout wasn't even needed in the first place?
In a new report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that states (including Washington, D.C.) had spent just 45 percent of the funding they had received through the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program, a $350 billion line item within the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which passed in March 2021. Local governments had reported spending just 38 percent of their funds received through the same program.
Radical activism has come to define the Biden administration, and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland could be the poster child. [snip] “The Biden administration’s embrace of radical special interests gets worse the deeper you go. A hard look into the Pueblo Action Alliance, a group with deep personal and professional ties to Interior Secretary Haaland and her daughter, raises several additional concerns that may implicate national security,” Tom Jones, the president of the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), told The Federalist. “The group’s connections to hostile Marxist foreign governments are simply one more example of radical ties to
Trump Might Win and Have Dems To Thank
6 replies
Former President Trump has held a slight lead in the RealClearPolitics Average of the polls since around September 11. While his lead is well within the margin of error, Democrats find it disconcerting that Biden is struggling against Trump. They have unceasingly berated, twice impeached, and four times indicted Trump, yet his support has grown. [snip] And who doesn’t miss 2019’s low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment, secure border, urban calm, peace breaking out in the Middle East, and no one seriously contemplating World War III. You get nostalgic just thinking about it.
Former television host Bob Barker has died at the age of 99.
Barker was most known as the Price is Right host for 35 years, which included 3,524 shows. The program remains the longest-running game show in television history. During his career, Barker's various television programs awarded $55 million in prizes. A spokesperson for Barker said he died from natural causes.
As The Gateway Pundit reported in 2020, election fraud whistleblowers came forward in December following the controversial election, including one who witnessed the shipping of an estimated 144,000-288,000 completed ballots across three state lines on October 21.
The new information was made public at a press conference by the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, a national constitutional litigation organization.
The Amistad Project said that they have sworn declarations that state over 300,000 ballots are at issue in Arizona, 548,000 in Michigan, 204,000 in Georgia, and over 121,000 in Pennsylvania.
Biden, 80, FALLS on stage while handing
out diplomas at U.S. Air Force Academy graduation 28 replies
out diplomas at U.S. Air Force Academy graduation 28 replies
President Biden has fallen on stage while handing out diplomas at the Air Force Academy in Colorado.
The 80-year-old commander-in-chief stumbled and fell to his knees and then got back up during the graduation ceremony in an incident likely to spark more concerns about his age as the nation's oldest president seeks a second term.
He was assisted by Air Force officials when he fell to the ground.
The president then walked away without help and appeared to point to a sandbag on the stage that he appeared to trip over.
Gail Macrae is a California nurse turned whistleblower who was fired for refusing to take the COVID-19 shot. She joined Liz Collin this week to discuss what she witnessed while working in health care during the pandemic. (snip) The protocol was to give COVID-19 patients remdesivir, an antiviral medication, even when they were a week past symptom onset.
“And we’re seeing no improvement. And as a matter of fact, we’re seeing patients going to multi-organ failures,” Macrae said.
Macrae said she wanted to trust organizations like the CDC and the AMA, but she came to believe that the practices and protocols they were mandating equated to “medical murder.”
I love a good conspiracy theory. (Snip) Michelle Obama hates politics, hates voters, and hates Washington D.C., and not necessarily in that order.
She emerged from her privileged Martha’s Vineyard cocoon recently to recount in a podcast (about herself, naturally) that she cried uncontrollably for a half an hour on Air Force One when she left Washington, D.C., after Donald Trump’s inauguration. “Just straight, uncontrollable sobbing” from “holding it together for eight years” under the enormous, horrible, crushing burden of being the First Lady of the United States. Her story was one of struggle where living in the White House with staff to cater to her every need,
Throughout Tucker Carlson’s segment on Monday, footage showed scenes that ran contrary to some of the narratives put forth by the likes of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and the January 6 committee by claiming that rioters had participated in an “insurrection.” One particularly jarring piece of footage actually appeared to show Jacob Chansley, a.k.a. the “Qanon Shaman,” being calmly escorted through the Capitol by police officers. (snip) Former President Donald Trump celebrated the segment, calling it one of the biggest “scoops” in U.S. history while demanding that the January 6 protesters be released.
“The Unselect Committee was a giant SCAM
Your Taxes Paid Thousands Of Government
Staff Covid Unemployment While They Worked
From Home 18 replies
Staff Covid Unemployment While They Worked
From Home 18 replies
While millions of jobless Americans struggled to make ends meet during devastating government-mandated lockdowns, thousands of federal employees double-dipped from taxpayer-funded pandemic unemployment funds while mostly working from home.
Despite staying on taxpayers’ payroll during the height of the pandemic panic, greedy bureaucrats in the Internal Revenue Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, United States Postal Service, Amtrak, and the Secret Service defrauded taxpayers out of millions more dollars under the guise of Covid unemployment fund and wage assistance programs. In the Department of Homeland Security alone, nearly 2,000 ineligible or potentially ineligible employees
Here are the tentative agreements and offers that Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has made, and others under discussion, as he aims to woo the 20 Republicans voting against him for Speaker.
Thirteen of those 20 Republicans backed McCarthy in Friday’s vote, edging him closer to the Speakership.
Several said their votes were pending negotiations.
What McCarthy has offered
Motion to vacate: McCarthy has offered to lower the threshold to bring up a move to force a vote on ousting the House Speaker down to just one member, a change from a threshold of five members that was revealed
PHOENIX The U.S. government sued Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and the state Wednesday over the placement of shipping containers as a barrier on the border with Mexico, saying it is trespassing on federal lands.
The complaint filed in U.S. District Court comes three weeks before the Republican governor steps aside for Democratic Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs, who has said she opposes the construction.
Ducey told U.S. officials earlier this week that Arizona is ready to help remove the containers, which he says were placed as a temporary barrier. But he wants the U.S. government to say when it will fill any
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Iran says Hamas ready to release hostages
if Israel stops airstrikes as at least
199 now known taken 44 replies
if Israel stops airstrikes as at least
199 now known taken 44 replies
Iran’s Foreign Ministry claimed Monday that Hamas was ready to release its hostages if Israel ceases its airstrikes along the Gaza Strip — as the number known to have been taken by the terrorist group rose to at least 199.
Hamas officials are “ready” to release hostages, but doing so would be “impossible” under Israeli airstrikes in the region, Iranian Foreign Ministry Nasser Kanaani relayed at a news conference in Tehran.
The terror group “stated that they are ready to take necessary measures to release the citizens and civilians held by resistant groups, but their point was that such measures require preparations that are impossible under daily bombardment by the Zionists
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will travel to Israel this week, putting himself in harm’s way to show that he stands squarely with the country as it reels from Hamas’ surprise attack and prepares a ground invasion meant to wipe out the militant group on its border.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the trip — the president's second foray into an active war zone this year, having traveled to Ukraine in February under the tightest secrecy. Biden is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders during the trip, which may also include a visit to neighboring Egypt. U.S. officials have been discussing with Egypt
The media and punditry are saying it’s the pressure of Jordan, but really, it’s the pressure of the voters that’s scaring the crap out of the Republicans in the House.
The block of opposition to Jim Jordan’s nomination in the House is crumbling, as their phones, emails and fax machines are being lit up by voters demanding support and threatening a removal primary against any House member who tries to stand in the way of the people.
Jordan has vowed to take his nomination to a House floor vote and force the Republican Party to take a stand. This is a solid strategy that puts any no vote against the will
Representative Jim Jordan fell short of the necessary 217 votes to become the next speaker of the House in the first round of voting on Tuesday, as a significant number of moderates within the Republican caucus refused to fall in line behind the hardline Ohio lawmaker.
While Republicans remain divided on Jordan, the Democrats unanimously backed House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), just as they did when former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) was elected in January.
At the end of the first ballot, Jeffries garnered 212 votes while Jordan received 200 and 20 others voted against the latter. Neither received a majority
While the White House dithered around, sending Americans trapped in Israel to Cyprus and other foreign locations, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis cut through the bureaucratic red tape to fly nearly 300 Floridians home to safety on Sunday. Last week, just five days after the attack on Israel, which left thousands dead and injured, DeSantis signed an executive order “authorizing rescue operations in Israel to bring Floridians home,” according to his X post on Oct. 12. “We will not leave our residents behind. To the many Floridians who are stuck in Israel, trying to get home—help is on the way.”
Harvard's Arab Alumni Association has appealed for donations to help students' mental health after they were subjected to 'relentless bullying and intimidation' for blaming Israel for the Hamas attacks of October 7.
The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee issued a letter on October 7, co-signed by 33 other Harvard student organizations, stating: 'We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.'
The students leading the 33 organizations and the Solidarity Committee were named and faced calls to be blacklisted from future employment. They included the son of British businesswoman Jo Malone.
The charred remains were so disfigured that at first they did not realise it was two people.
But when pathologists gently began to examine, they could see the bodies were those of an adult and a child. And they were hugging tightly.
That is how it had ended for them, trapped in a room as Hamas terrorists set fire to their home. As the horror of burning to death came to them, the adult had nothing left to offer but to hold that terrified child in their arms.And as unbearable as that is, it is by no means an isolated case here at Israel's National Centre of Forensic Medicine, where the bodies
Interesting development….
(Via Wall Street Journal) – The U.S. military has selected roughly 2,000 troops to prepare for a potential deployment to support Israel, U.S. defense officials said.
The troops are tasked with missions like advising and medical support, the officials said, and they are from across the U.S. armed services. They aren’t intended to serve in a combat role, the officials said. No infantry have been put on prepare-to-deploy order.
President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is ordering its employees to defy biological reality by referring to transgender coworkers by their “preferred pronouns.”
The HHS, which employs approximately 80,000 people in the United States and abroad, imposed its new “Gender Identity and Non-Discrimination Guidance” late last week, which outlines “employee rights and protections related to gender identity,” according to an alleged HHS email sent to employees and obtained by Catholic News Agency (CNA).
Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian leading the polls in Argentina’s presidential election this month, has made a lot of contentious statements in recent years: Humans did not cause climate change; people should be able to sell their organs; his nation’s currency “is not even good as manure.”
But, to many Argentines, he has done something far worse: attacked the pope.
In 2020, Mr. Milei, a self-identifying Catholic, called Pope Francis an “imbecile” and “the representative of the Evil One on earth” because he defends “social justice.”
President Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday in a dramatic show of solidarity with the Jewish state, which is still reeling from a surprise attack by Hamas terrorists earlier this month.
The trip comes ahead of Israel’s expected ground invasion of the Hamas-ruled Gaza in an effort to wipe out the organization and as the U.S. ramps up efforts with Middle East allies to avoid a humanitarian crisis.
White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters late Monday that Mr. Biden’s one-day trip will also include a stopover in Jordan, where the president will also include a meeting
A Cornell University professor was caught on camera telling students Hamas’ terror attack on Israel — which has left more than 1,400 dead — was “exhilarating” and “energizing.”
The remarks were made at a pro-Palestine protest by Russell Rickford, an associate professor of history at the top-tier Ithaca, New York school and posted online Sunday by a student who called them “shameful.” The footage of Rickford’s impassioned speech was also shared with The Post by two other tipsters. They declined to say when and where exactly the rally took place, but both said they were shocked by the brazen remarks.
Comments:
Much of the money that WAS spent went towards ball fields, govt golf courses, state tourism promotion, and the paychecks of govt. employees.