What's In Congress' Stimulus Package For This Pandemi

As said, here's what's in Congress' just-approved stimulus package to help the nation deal with this coronavirus pandemic.

Help for families

• The bill would provide direct payments of up to $1,200 for most individuals and $2,400 for most married couples filing jointly with an extra $500 for each child.
• Assistance would start to phase out for individuals earning more than $75,000 and for couples with more than $150,000 in income.
• Unemployment insurance benefits would be expanded, increasing the maximum benefit by $600 a week for up to four months. Benefits would be available to workers who are part-time, self-employed or part of the gig economy. People who are still unemployed after state benefits end could get an additional 13 weeks of help.
• Food assistance programs would get a boost as would programs to help low-income households avoid eviction and a program to improve internet access in rural areas.
• Homeowners with federally-backed mortgages would be protected from foreclosures for as long as 180 days.
• Students with federal loans could suspend payments until October.
• Students receiving Pell grants who have to drop out because of coronavirus would not be penalized. 

Help for small businesses

• The bill would give small businesses access to a nearly $350 billion loan program to cover monthly expenses like payroll, rent and utilities. The loans would not have to be repaid if businesses maintained their workforce.
• The eight weeks of assistance would be retroactive to Feb. 15, 2020 to help bring back workers who have already been laid off.

Help for corporations

• The package includes a financial lifeline to the hardest-hit industries, including passenger and cargo airlines. Another pot of money would be available to help other businesses for a combined $500 billion.
• Companies receiving assistance would be barred from raising the pay of certain executives.
• Any company receiving a government loan would be prohibited from buying back stocks while getting assistance as well for an additional year.
• Businesses controlled by the president, vice president, members of Congress and heads of federal agencies are not eligible for loans.
• Companies that kept on workers despite a significant loss of revenue could get a tax credit.
• The bill provides other tax relief to businesses by deferring tax payments, increasing deductibility for interest expenses and allowing immediate expensing of qualified property improvements, especially for the hospitality industry.

Help for health care providers

• Hospitals and medical centers would get billions to handle surging caseloads.
• Hospitals treating coronavirus patients would also get higher reimbursements form Medicare.
• Hospitals could request accelerated payments from Medicare.
• Across-the-board Medicare cuts that were part of a previous deficit reduction agreement would be temporarily halted.
• Extra funding for the Defense Department includes money to deploy the National Guard and use the Defense Production Act to help fast-track production of needed medical supplies to combat the coronavirus.
• Rules on using and paying for telehealth services would be eased.
• Funding would increase for federal agencies to speed work on therapies and a possible coronavirus vaccine, among other activities.
• When there is a vaccine, Medicare beneficiaries would not have to pay to receive it.

Help for state and local governments

• The package includes $150 billion to help state and local governments, which have had major unanticipated expenses while losing revenue. States would get a minimum amount and other funds would be allocated through a population-based formula.
• Disaster relief funding that state and local governments can access as well as a popular funding program for local governments would also be boosted.
• Child care programs would get a funding boost to help meet emergency staffing needs so health care workers and other critical workers will have child care.
• States, which have been postponing primaries, would get additional funds to make voting safer such as expanding early voting and the ability to vote by mail.
• Public transit agencies, which have lost ridership, would get $25 billion in assistance. Airports and Amtrak would also get billions of dollars of assistance.
• Schools and colleges could access nearly $31 billion to continue to teach students as schools are closed.
• State and local police and fire departments could get help paying for overtime and for medical items like personal protective equipment.
• The deadline for states to meet Real ID requirements for enhanced driver's licenses would be extended a year, to no earlier than October of 2021.

Help for the arts

• Museums, libraries and arts organizations across the country, which have been closing because of the pandemic, could get a boost from grants to state arts and humanities organizations.
• The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which has been closed until May, would get $25 million so it can reopen its doors once the crisis is over.
• The Smithsonian Institution would get $7.5 million to help with teleworking, deep cleaning and overtime for security, medical staff, and zoo keepers.

Contributing: Nicholas Wu and Christal Hayes, USA TODAY.

Be careful, be safe out there, y'all and STAY HOME.

Only One Presidential Candidate Talking Solutions

The one candidate running for the presidency in 2016 not talking about the other candidates but instead, speaking about what Americans need and America needs.



Senator Sanders is the one person talking about America's issues, our problems.

He's also the only one speaking to our solutions.

#feeltheBern

Sign up, connect, commit, volunteer, even donate, here: Bernie Sanders

And this is a failed presidency

Right.

And in case anyone out there isn't aware or convinced of more of the successes of this administration:

Updated! A List of 276 Accomplishments by PresidentObama with Citations!

"Why are you a Democrat?"

LOTS of reasons:

Like

Kansas children this year at Thanksgiving

 

With thanks to the Kansas Democratic Party and their Facebook page today.

 

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

 

 

 

 

On the American National Deficit

...and responsible politicians, office holders, government representatives and political parties:

More?   Here you go:

Link: 

Federal Deficit Falls A Shocking 32% Under Obama

We must end campaign contributions

We have to get the big, ugly, corrupting influence of money from the wealthy and corporations out of our election system and government.

We must.

It's the only way we'll get our government and so, our country, back for the people and good of the nation.

What a staunch business magazine has to say about this election

From Forbes on this election and these two presidential candidates:

Want a Better Economy? History Says Vote Democrat!

"...The common viewpoint is that Republicans are good for business, which is good for the economy. Republican policies – and the more Adam Smith, invisible hand, limited regulation, lassaiz faire the better – are expected to create a robust, healthy, growing economy. Meanwhile, the common view of Democrat policies is that they too heavily favor regulation and higher taxes which are economy killers."

According to Bob Deitrick and Lew Godlfarb in their reputedly "easy to read book", “Bulls, Bears and the Ballot Box”, they found the following and more:

--Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more under Democratic presidents

--Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown 7 times more under Democratic presidents

--Corporate profits have grown over 16% more per year under Democratic presidents (they actually declined under Republicans by an average of 4.53%/year)

--Average annual compound return on the stock market has been 18 times greater under Democratic presidents (If you invested $100k for 40 years of Republican administrations you had $126k at the end, if you invested $100k for 40 years of Democrat administrations you had $3.9M at the end)

--Republican presidents added 2.5 times more to the national debt than Democratic presidents

--The two times the economy steered into the ditch (Great Depression and Great Recession) were during Republican, laissez faire administrations

And that's just for starters. The book holds much more information and data.

I thought it important to point out, so close to election day.

Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2012/10/10/want-a-better-economy-history-says-vote-democrat/

Jimmy Carter, telling it like it is (guest post)

From the The Gazette last evening:

U.S. drone attacks amount to human rights violations, Carter says

America's citizens accepting human rights violations never imagined before 9/11

Former President Jimmy Carter said Thursday that America is engaging in – and its citizens are accepting — human rights violations that “would never have been dreamed of” before the terrorist attacks that occurred in this country 11 years ago.

The nation’s 39th president said the U.S. government under both Republican and Democratic administrations has violated 10 of 30 provisions set out in a universal declaration of human rights that was forged after World War II, including perpetually detaining people in prison without informing them of any charges, providing them access to legal counsel or bringing them to trial and more recently by killing people via the use of unmanned drones.

“We have now decided as a nation that it’s OK to kill people without a trial with our drones, and this includes former American citizens who are looked upon as dangerous to us,” Carter told a group of Drake University students involved in a social-justice learning program.

“Not just terrorists, but innocent participants in weddings and so forth that happen to be there. I think this is acting in a way that turns people against us unnecessarily because there is a great deal of animosity about the United States that is unnecessary, in my opinion, because our drones are performing these things” in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and even in the Philippines, he said.

“These are the kinds of actions that would never have been dreamed of before 9/11,” Carter noted, referencing the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“I think we need to go back to the purity of the guarantees of basic human rights,” he added. “Most Americans either don’t know about it or accept it. I’m not criticizing one leader compared to another because both Democratic and Republican leaders are participating in these violations. We should all look upon human rights as something that is precious to us because we need to get back and be the champion of human rights and I believe the champion of peace as well.”

And he's so right. This is all a horrible travesty and no way to operate in the world.

Full story here: http://thegazette.com/2012/09/13/u-s-drone-attacks-amount-to-human-rights-violations-carter-says/

Quote of the day

"This is going to be a squeaker of an election. Polls are showing Obama and Romney within a hair's breath of one another in the critical swing states that will determine the outcome. How can that be when Romney is an empty suit who believes nothing, hasn't articulated any program, and has (along with his running mate) called for more tax cuts for the wealthy, more spending cuts for the poor, and an evisceration of Medicare and Medicaid? When they want to deregulate Wall Street and regulate women?

The answer is the jobs situation. Yes, Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 with higher unemployment than we have now. But at least he had the wind at his back: an economy that by 1936 was growing by 14 percent. Barack Obama doesn't have an economy that's moving that swiftly in the right direction. It's growing just 2.2 percent, on an annualized basis.

So the real contest is between someone who very few Americans know or even like -- Mitt Romney -- who doesn't stand for anything, or someone most Americans feel they know quite well and like very much -- Barack Obama -- who is presiding over a terrible economy that shows few signs of fundamental improvement.

My betting is on Obama, but, frankly, I'm worried."

--Robert Reich, American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

Go, register, folks. Register to vote and then be sure to vote this November.

And enjoy your Sunday.

Links: https://www.facebook.com/RBReich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich

Quote of the day

“The most important question is, what kind of country do you want to live in? If you want a 'you’re-on-your-own, winner-take-all society', you should support the Republican ticket.

If you want a country of shared prosperity and shared responsibility — a 'we’re-all-in-this-together' society — you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.”

~-Former President Bill Clinton, last night at the Democratic National Convention

Question for Pat Robertson

God didn't send a hurricane or other natural disaster to Charlotte, North Carolina to interrupt or shorten the Democratic National Convention.

What's this mean?

Quote of the day

"The words used by statesmen in our day no longer have a common meaning. Perhaps they never had. Freedom, democracy, human rights, international morality, peace itself, mean different things to different men. Words, in a constant flow of propaganda - itself an instrument of war - are employed to confuse, mislead, and debase the common man. Democracy is prostituted to dignify enslavement; freedom and equality are held good for some men but withheld from others by and in allegedly "democratic" societies; in "free" societies, so-called, individual human rights are severely denied; aggressive adventures are launched under the guise of "liberation". Truth and morality are subverted by propaganda, on the cynical assumption that truth is whatever propaganda can induce people to believe. Truth and morality, therefore, become gravely weakened as defences against injustice and war. With what great insight did Voltaire, hating war enormously, declare: 'War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not colour his crime with the pretext of justice.'" --Ralph Bunche, Nobel Lecture, 1950

Quote of the day

"It's probably hopeless by now to try to excite the GOP's conservative base about Romney, not only because of ideology, but even more because of sociology. Romney's life, career, and manner all combine to remind the white working class why their parents and grandparents voted Democratic." --David Frum, Republican and former speechwriter for George W. Bush

Link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/18/romney-campaign.html

We need to educate ourselves on war

Quote of the day

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.” ―Franklin D. Roosevelt

Quote of the day

"...I'm a Democratic Socialist which means the function of government is to represent middle-income and working people rather than just the wealthy and the powerful. You know, one of the things we have done here, we've become very religious in worshipping greed and we put on the front pages of magazines pictures of people who have made millions of dollars. We ignore the cops, the policemen, the teachers, the nurses wo every day are doing so much to improve the lives of people. We need to change our value system." --Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent, Vermont. Links: http://michaelmoore.com/books-films/capitalism-love-story; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232207/; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhydyxRjujU; http://sanders.senate.gov/

Quote of the day---and it isn't from the Tea Party

" If it turns out in the end that we have a crypto-fascist movement and the only thing standing between us and fascism is Barack Obama, then we have to put our foot on the brake. But we’ve got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties. Our last hope is to generate a democratic awakening among our fellow citizens. This means raising our voices, very loud and strong, bearing witness, individually and collectively. Tavis [Smiley] and I have talked about ways of civil disobedience, beginning with ways for both of us to get arrested, to galvanize attention to the plight of those in prisons, in the hoods, in poor white communities. We must never give up. We must never allow hope to be eliminated or suffocated.”  --Dr. Cornel West, on President Obama and the next election

Link to original post:   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/16-1 

Quotes of the day

“If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble.”  --Gene Sharp, author of “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” also founder of the Albert Einstein Institution


"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  --President Franklin Delano Roosevelt


"You say you want a revolution?"  --John Lennon  


(keeping in mind, "...if you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out.")


Have a great weekend, y'all.

For Americans now

Note to America:  Egyptians just successfully pushed their government and leaders to make sure they gave them true democracy and democratic government.

Looks like it's time for us to "walk like an Egyptian."

Just sayin'.


Enjoy your Sunday, y'all.