Free Republic

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR AMERICANS: President Donald J. Trump is signing new legislation to further assist American small businesses, workers, and healthcare providers. President Trump is signing into law additional funding to support Americans impacted by the coronavirus.This legislation provides $320 billion in additional funding for the incredibly successful Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which has already aided countless small businesses and millions of American workers. With this new round of funding, President Trump will have signed into law more than $670 billion for the program. The bill also appropriates $60 billion more for the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Disaster Loan Program.To...

Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced an unplanned Senate session will take place Tuesday as Democrats continue their refusals to restock funding for the Paycheck Protection Program.  “It’s now been four days since the Paycheck Protection Program ran out of money. Republicans have been trying to secure more funding for this critical program for a week and a half. At this hour, our Democratic colleagues are still prolonging their discussions with the Administration, so the Senate regretfully will not be able to pass more funding for Americans’ paychecks today," McConnell said in remarks on the floor Monday. “However, since this is...

Jobless claims continue to surge as more than 6.6 million Americans filed new unemployment benefits last week, according to new data released from the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday.That brings the three-week total of new unemployment claims to 16.8 million as the economic fallout over the Wuhan coronavirus continues to take its toll on the nation’s economy. About 6.6 million Americans had filed new claims the week before and 3.3 million new claims were filed in the week ending on March 28. The previous record for number of new filings in a single week was in 1982 when 695,000...

...The relief for small businesses is not adequate. A tax credit for some small businesses for 50% of wages paid to employees during the coronavirus crisis is absurd. Most have been ordered to be closed so there were no wages and they had to fire employees so they could collect unemployment. They need business loans suspended and property taxes. That will put pressure on states to lift the absurd closures.

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan famously says “the mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”. Satan is in Hell while he makes this rousing speech to his fellow fallen angels. Surrounded by darkness and pain, he is urging himself and those listening to ignore their reality. Satan would have it that you and I were that blind as well. And we have been. For years, Americans have lived in a country that has grown stagnate. We are often told that innovation is growing “exponentially” while “Moore’s Law” is touted...

"We’re deeply committed to ensuring that small businesses have the support they require." President Donald J. Trump PROVIDING FINANCIAL RELIEF: President Donald J. Trump is working to provide financial relief for small businesses harmed by the coronavirus outbreak. The President and his Administration are working to provide disaster loans and further support to small business owners affected by the coronavirus outbreak.The President signed legislation to support billions in low-interest disaster loans for small businesses economically impacted by the coronavirus. The Small Business Administration (SBA) has streamlined the application process for these loans, which offer up to $2 million in...

Some small businesses are scrambling to figure out how to stay afloat after a high court ruling. A recent California Supreme Court decision is changing the way independent contractors are classified, and it’s already having a big impact on local shops. May fear it will hurt millions of workers and affect businesses’ bottom lines. The work doesn’t stop at Downtown Sacramento’s Bottle and Barlow, even if it became a one-man shop. “I lost my entire staff,” said owner Anthony Gianotti. He says all seven of his barbers quit after a state supreme court ruling that will change their way of work. “It doesn’t just affect...

In today’s hyper-partisan era, one goal crosses the political divide: the need for more entrepreneurs. Encomia are everywhere: Politicians praise them, Hollywood lionizes them, venture capitalists chase them, universities foster them. Entrepreneurs, from Henry Ford to Elon Musk, are embedded in American lore. In an earlier era they were popularized in Horatio Alger rags-to-riches terms; today it’s the garage-to-tech-titan stories that have legendary status for Millennials. Could it be, however, that we’ve hit peak preoccupation with entrepreneurship? Although entrepreneurial magic is often discussed in “tech” terms, the reality is most startups involve such things as restaurants and lawn services or...

WOODBURY, Minn. – As a proud owner of a boutique public relations firm, I , like so many small business owners throughout the United States, had a feeling that the national election results might deviate from the suggested outcome of the aggregate polling data. I have represented a variety of small businesses’ public relations needs for over 20 years and can confidently say I have spoken directly to over 5,000 small business owners nationwide. My specialty is small business; I have not worked for the Fortune 500 crowd or represented their business needs in any way. For those that feed...

Possibly the defining business trend coming out of the financial crisis has been a "startup boom." Everyone is building an app or starting their own business it seems. This image, however, may be just an illusion, according to Michelle Meyer, US economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Both the formation of firms (for example, McDonald's as a whole) and establishments (an individual McDonald's restaurant), have dropped off precipitously since the financial crisis and remained low. This is important, according to Meyer, because new businesses typically hire faster and produce higher levels of productivity than firms that have been around...

Barack Obama spoke at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit Friday in Palo Alto, California. This was his first speech after the Brexit vote left another mark on his years of failed leadership at home and abroad. During his speech to young entrepreneurs Obama took a swipe at whitey. Obama: When people can start their own businesses it helps people and families succeed… It offers a positive path for young people seeking to make something of themselves and can empower people who previously have been locked out of the existing social order, women, minorities, others who aren’t part of the old...

When Maryland business owner Thomas Kunkel first learned about the Affordable Care Act, he was excited about the prospect of the new health care law. “From the small business standpoint, it was actually one of the first times I felt like a bit of a social program might actually benefit a small business,” he told The Daily Signal. “Usually it’s the opposite.” Kunkel owns Full House Marketing and Print in Edgewood, Maryland, and employs 21 full-time workers and up to 10 part-time employees. While he doesn’t provide them with health insurance, Kunkel cuts his workers a monthly check through a...

With a broad new class of workers becoming eligible for overtime, many small businesses are scrambling to figure out how to factor the regulations into their bottom line. The Obama administration on Wednesday announced the final details of new labor rules to increase the salary cutoff for overtime pay. Although the plan was outlined a year ago and employers have several months to comply, many say the change will be a challenge to small businesses that pride themselves on a scrappy, entrepreneurial culture. “We are pretty flexible,” said Kelli Glasser, who is president and chief executive of Exhibit Concepts, a...

San Francisco became the first place in the country Tuesday to require businesses to provide fully paid leave for new parents in what was hailed as the latest move to address income inequality in the nation. The measure approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors will give new mothers and fathers six weeks of fully paid time off, a rarity now offered to some government sector workers and some private employees, particularly those who work in the tech industry. […] The measure requires another formal vote by the board next week as well as approval by Mayor Ed Lee, who...

One of the worst of Obamacares ill-conceived provisions went quietly into effect on January 1. The employer mandate, previously inflicted only on businesses with 100 or more employees, will now be imposed on those with as few as 50. This mandate will prevent countless small employers from hiring workers they would otherwise have hired and incentivize many others to replace full-time employees with part-timers. It is such an obvious job killer that the Obama administration delayed enforcement until after the 2014 midterms, the liberal Urban Institute has called for its repeal, and it has even been obliquely criticized by Hillary...

Employers who reimburse their workers for health care costs will face massive tax penalties beginning Wednesday. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, with its mandate that all Americans purchase insurance and requirement for businesses to offer employees insurance plans, many small companies provided coverage by directly reimbursing medical costs or for the cost of private insurance plans. Businesses do it because that’s a less complicated process than dealing with an official health insurance plan, but continuing to do so after July 1 could cost them hundreds of dollars in fines each day. Business groups are calling attention...

OAKLAND - Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf made a pitch Wednesday morning for the 82 percent of Oakland voters who passed a minimum wage hike in November to support local businesses struggling to adjust to higher costs. "It's time for Oaklanders to put their money where their votes were," Schaaf said at a news conference outside of Farley's East coffee shop on Grand Avenue.

The IRS has apologized for stealing, or rather seizing, the back accounts of small businesses that did nothing other than deposit an improper amount of cash into their accounts. Pressured by Congress, the IRS has apologized for seizing banks accounts from otherwise law-abiding business owners simply because those owners structured bank transactions to avoid federal reporting requirements. The Associated Press reports “IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress Wednesday that the IRS is changing policies to prevent the seizures, as long as the money came from legal means.” Civil asset forfeiture is a government racket where “suspicious” deposits at one’s banking...

Although the Obama administration has yet to release the federal health care premiums for 2015, some private insurers have. One of them in Minnesota has indicated that they will be showing increases of up to 60% for their ACA-compliant policies. Preferred One, the largest and lowest-cost provider of health insurance in the state, pulled out of the state’s MNsure exchange last month due to its being “unsustainable.” Alycia Riedl, with the Minnesota Association of Health Underwriters, commented on the news:

In 2011 during his reelection campaign Barack Obama promised Americans who “get their insurance from the workplace” will see $3,000 in savings thanks to Obamacare.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Not true. The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), a group representing 11,000 members and small businesses, has not had a single member report health-care savings under Obamacare. The New York Post reported: New York’s small-business owners, seniors and doctors are among the big losers as President Obama’s prescription for health-insurance reform takes effect. The National Federation of Independent Businesses, an organization that represents nearly 11,000 entrepreneurs across the state, says it has yet to find...