Racial disparities in society are only accentuated by emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, all inequities in our society have just been exposed that much more by the current crisis. Our system is a capitalist one that has relied on racism and concentration of capital and wealth to control a massive population of have nots. One of the symptoms of this racism is that small businesses owned by Black and Latino Americans have been frozen out of an already rigged process of COVID-19 stimulus relief. This is due in part to the fact that historically and presently, people of color have a considerably harder time getting loans from banks.
Not having a relationship with a bank makes getting Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) stimulus money considerably harder and as a result, while small businesses in general have been mostly kept out of the Republican, big business-focused package, it has been much harder on businesses of color. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.) Already undercapitalized, Black-owned businesses weren’t going to ask for the large amounts that other bigger small businesses were going to ask for—and banks make bigger fees on bigger loans. NBC News’ Olivia Solon pointed out that while fiscal conservative, anti-”welfare” crusaders like the fake news makers over at Project Veritas decry the big government spending of the CARES package, they didn’t seem to have an issue with taking more than half a million of taxpayer money to keep their lights on.
The “non-profit” organization, most recently known for hyping up a completely empty and very quickly debunked election fraud “exclusive,” received $558,900 in PPP stimulus, according to searchppp.com. The right-wing, make-em-up investigative organization is fronted by James O’Keefe—a sort of older version of pathetic GOP fraudster Jacob Wohl. He’s best known for hiring people to say they were sexually assaulted in order to discredit real victims of sexual assault. It’s this kind of dirtbaggery that gets Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ ultra right-wing wife to present you with an award at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. (True story.)
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez boosted this story, synthesizing the racism and hypocrisy wrapped up in a holiday season bow.
This led to some right-wingers rubbing their tiny braincells together to attack Rep. Ocasio-Cortez for selling $58 “Tax the Rich” sweatshirts on her campaign’s website. Unfortunately, there’s math and the small factor of paying workers living wages. Not everything can be made for cheap in China, guys who seem to want to have a trade war with China but don’t understand how costs work.
