Free Republic

U.S. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Broadway League renewed the call for dedicated federal funding for Broadway and other New York live venues today, reiterating the push for the $10 billion bipartisan Save Our Stages campaign. “Today we are fighting hard to keep stages alive, stories told and shows going on,” Schumer said at an outdoor press conference in New York’s theater district near the TKTS Booth. The senator joked that he would demand “a Lion King’s share of federal relief” for Broadway. Citing the $15 billion contributed by Broadway to New York’s economy last year, the 100,000...

State and local governments want more funds from the federal government to patch their budgets. Lack of revenue due to the recession and self-inflicted damage from the COVID-19 shutdowns of their economies, as well as larger-than-ever expenditures on top their regular overextended budgets, mean that many of them are hurting for cash. And while they're asking for $500 billion in bailout cash, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants to give them $1 trillion. I, on the other hand, think it's about time state and local governments start fending for themselves. As I've explained before, there are many reasons to...

@SteveScaliseDems' demands: - Mail-in/No-ID voting - Stimulus checks to illegal immigrants - Green New Deal provisions - Tax breaks for blue state millionaires - $ for sanctuary cities - $ for pot industry What a joke. That's not COVID relief. It's Pelosi's No Liberal Cause Left Behind Act. Video...

We are three months from the Presidential election, and the stakes for the future of America have never been higher. The COVID-19 global pandemic knocked America's robust economy back on its heels. As states cautiously re-open, President Trump has been laser-focused on supporting small businesses and getting our nation to work. However, in Washington, D.C., with 51 million people out of work, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrats, and their connected cronies have abused SBA loans. They have snuck numerous provisions into emergency bills under the cover of COVID-19. The most terrifying sign of Democrats' plans is their embracing the previously...

Air travel may have resumed in some corners of the planet, although for some airlines it was too late. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought a tumultuous period for aviation, with 23 airlines collapsing following the international travel restrictions introduced to curb the spread of the disease. In the UK, the FCO advised against travel in mid-March and only lifted this restriction, for a limited number of countries, in late June. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) last month predicted global losses could reach billions of dollars, as global air traffic remains at only around one third of pre-pandemic levels. And...

At least 18 left-wing groups supported by the billionaire George Soros's liberal donor club applied for federal loans meant to help small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, receiving up to $20 million in taxpayer cash between them. Groups backed by the Democracy Alliance, a donor network cofounded by Soros, hauled in cash from the Paycheck Protection Program, a federal program established to provide an economic boost to small businesses and their workers during coronavirus shutdowns. Together, the groups received between $8.5 million and $20.7 million. In addition to the Democracy Alliance groups, another liberal donor network that pays the club...

As Minnesota leaders pondered their next steps, it's not yet clear what other sources of funds they may tap. Denied federal aid to help rebuild burned-out, vandalized businesses in the wake of riots that followed George Floyd’s killing, Minnesota leaders pondered their next steps Saturday. But it’s not yet clear what other sources of funds they may tap. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on Friday denied Gov. Tim Walz’s request for nearly $16 million in aid to help rebuild and repair structures in Minneapolis and St. Paul, many of them left in ruins by the riots and fires that...

Robert De Niro says he’s running out of dinero. The coronavirus dealt a massive financial blow to the actor’s finances he revealed in court, as his estranged wife asked for an emergency order to raise her monthly American Express card credit limit from $50,000 to $100,000. The “Irishman” actor appeared by phone on a Skype call in his Manhattan divorce case with Grace Hightower as her lawyer told a judge that De Niro unfairly cut her monthly Am-Ex allowance from $100,000 to $50,000 and said she and their children had been banned from an upstate compound where De Niro is...

YRC Worldwide (NASDAQ: YRCW) unveiled plans of a new $700 million lending agreement with the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which in turn will receive a stake of nearly 30% in the company. The July 1 press release outlines the latest lifeline for the less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier. The loan comes from a federal lending program under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), which is intended to help businesses survive the economic downturn caused by COVID-19 and maintain employment for their workers. The lending agreement will allow YRC to repay recently deferred health and welfare and pension...

The recession is hitting state and city budgets hard in the new fiscal year that starts on July 1. They are responding by firing workers, reducing services, and even increasing taxes. Massive federal aid is the only real solution. The new fiscal year for 46 states and many cities begins on Wednesday. And a flood of red ink caused by the deep pandemic recession is forcing them to fire workers, reduce spending and services, and even raise taxes (one of the worst things you can do in a recession). Without Congress providing up to $1 trillion in federal aid, non-federal...

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the budget that begins July 1. The spending plan relies on billions of dollars in federal aid that haven’t materialized, keeps spending level from the current year despite revenue losses and cost increases from the COVID-19 pandemic and gives Medicaid access to seniors who are undocumented residents. In a statement, the governor also urged the federal government to pass a funding plan to give state and local governments billions of dollars in an effort to cover parts of the state’s $42.9 billion spending plan...

Mayor Jacob Frey (D) is seeking federal aid to help Minneapolis recover from the protests and riots that have wrecked the area. “With at least $55 million in estimated damage and far more to come, Minneapolis will need state and federal aid as it attempts to rebuild hundreds of structures after the riots following George Floyd’s death,” Frey explained on Thursday, according to the Star Tribune. The report continued: City officials are still putting together a complete tally of the destruction and cautioned that estimates are likely to rise significantly. Gov. Tim Walz and members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation are...

Canadian rap superstar Drake donated $100,000 to the National Bail Out fund on Monday, which seeks to help pay the bonds of people arrested across America as protests in response to the death of George Floyd in police custody have devolved into riots and mass looting.

The Golden State is showing its brass with more unemployed people than the entire population of Alabama. So, California’s leaders decided that this was an urgent time to bail out illegal aliens. California’s illegal alien population is its shadow economy and with many of the industries that employ them shut down, the Democrats who depend on ghost districts populated by illegals decided that something had to be urgently done to keep the illegal aliens from fleeing back across the border.

At a time when huge spending bills marked “coronavirus relief” are easily passing Congress with little scrutiny, poorly run states are asking unscrupulous members of Congress to slip in taxpayer bailouts to rescue them from years of their own fiscal mismanagement. In response, the House of Representatives recently passed a coronavirus relief bill that includes a half trillion dollars (trillion with a “t”) in unrestricted funds to bail out state governments for years of reckless expenditures entirely unrelated to the pandemic. I have the same reaction to these proposals that I had when I worked in government and people were...

According to a Fox News report, $80 million in stimulus funds intended to help small businesses struggling through coronavirus economic hardship have gone instead to Planned Parenthood, the multi-billion dollar abortion business. Under the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), Congress allocated $349 billion in federal funds to provide assistance to small businesses with fewer than 500 employees. According to the Department of the Treasury, funds may be used to pay up to eight weeks of payroll costs including benefits” as well as “interest on mortgages, rent, and utilities.” In August 2019, Planned Parenthood rejected Title X federal funding after...

CHICAGO — A detail tucked in a Fox 32 investigative report about Illinois contractors trekking across the border to build a new mansion at Gov. J.B. Pritzker's Wisconsin horse farm raised the eyebrow of somebody who knows how deals get done in America's most corrupt state. The contractor doing construction on J.B. Pritzker's Wisconsin horse farm won a $9 million coronavirus contract that was part of the state's pandemic response. The "dwelling contractor" listed on Wisconsin building permits, Bulley & Andrews, is the same company caught up in the alleged "scheme to defraud" Cook County taxpayers by removing toilets from...

“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” That saying holds true more now than ever. But in the rush to “do something,” what the government does – in response to the global pandemic – actually matters. In the last few months, Washington has spent at least $5 trillion trying to mitigate the economic damage done by lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. And that’s not counting the cash the Federal Reserve is setting on fire daily. It’s easy to sneak favors into massive omnibus spending bills, so it’s Christmas in spring right now. The Kennedy Center gets a truckload of...

Blue States Will see economic ruin in Cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, these cities may start to look like Caracas, Venezuela in the weeks ahead. America is starting to reopen for business across the country — except for a handful of states where lockdown orders are expected to remain in place for weeks to come. With very few exceptions, the cities and states that have ordered their businesses to remain comatose and their millions of workers to go without paychecks are blue, blue, blue. This list includes New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, and Oregon....

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) says "the federal government has an ethical obligation to bail out my state. Admittedly, we might have been excessively generous in how we spent taxpayers' money. Perhaps this was a mistake. However, there is no need to make the people of California suffer for the miscues of their government. The federal government has an unconstrained power to create money. Failure to use this power to rescue California from bankruptcy would be a crime against humanity." Among the "miscues" are $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities, 15,000 hotel rooms leased to house the homeless along with...