More Coronavirus Aid is Coming to Workers by Month’s End

Last night President Trump announced that he would be sending Bat Plague aid to Americans by Executive Order.  Specifically, he will be extending federal unemployment benefits, ordering a payroll tax holiday, extending the moratorium on evictions, and extending the deferral of student loan payments and interest, all through at least the end of the year and beyond, if needed.

Further, the Executive Order will be retroactive to July 1.  That means, if you’ve been working and paying Social Security and Medicaid taxes, you’ll be starting out with a nice check that refunds the taxes you’ve paid since then, and after that check you’ll continue to get a bigger paycheck.

If you’re unemployed, you’ll be getting a check for the federal benefits you’ve missed since they ended on July 31, and then continuing relief as long as unemployment rates are high.  If you’re paying a student loan, any interest you’ve accrued since the end of July will be subtracted from your debt and you can continue deferring payments without penalty or interest until the economy is back to normal.

Democrats Block Coronavirus Aid — Trump Goes Ahead Without Them

Democrats had been blocking all this aid for weeks, even though it’s workers in Democrat-run cities and states who are suffering the most from Covid lockdowns.  In Nevada, for example, the unemployment rate is 25% and rising, with new layoffs being announced daily due to the Democrat governor’s absurd, ineffectual and just plain mean Covid policies.  Meanwhile, the nationwide unemployment rate has fallen to 10.2% as job hiring in Republican-run states goes vertical.

Democrats had been blocking aid for working people to get massive bailouts for Democrat-run states whose state and local government tax revenues have been decimated by the Democrats’ lockdowns.  In Nevada, where our annual state budget runs around $4 billion, we are looking at a $2 billion state tax revenue deficit and the governor and Democrat-run legislature have only cut expenses by $500 million.  Democrats were hoping to force working taxpayers in red states to bail out Nevada, California, New York, Illinois, etc. and enable the continuing lockdowns in these states.

In fact, Democrats were blocking aid for working people not only to bail out their lockdown policies, but to bail out overspending that goes back decades, particularly on public employee pensions.  While Republicans were willing to agree to some amount of money to help states with tax revenue losses directly due to Chop Fluey, they weren’t willing to charge red state taxpayers for California’s ridiculous pension deficit, health care for illegal aliens, sanctuary city policies and the like.

Democrats also demanded Coronabux for illegal aliens, mass release of felons, banning signature verification for absentee voting, banning voter ID, affirmative action policies in weed stores, and nationwide mail-in voting.

But Trump just cut the Democrats’ legs out from under them.  Now that working and unemployed people are getting the aid they need, Democrats have no bargaining power to get big blue state bailouts.  All they’ve got left is threats to sue to take away voters’ aid less than three months before an election.  Good luck with that.

But Democrats are already running on higher taxes, riots, war, white genocide and exporting jobs to China, so they’ll probably give it a go.  They will lose, because Trump’s EO relies on the same national emergency laws he used to redirect federal funds to build the border wall.  Democrats challenged that in court too, and SCOTUS ruled for Trump.  But Democrats seem to have developed an addiction to losing.

Trump told Democrats exactly what he was going to do if they continued to block WuFlu aid and he’s done it before.  It’s amazing how incapable of learning Democrats have become.

So Will Las Vegas Reopen?

I’m enjoying imagining the look on Nevada Governor Sisolak’s face when he got the news he wouldn’t be getting the $1.5 billion bailout he expected.  While some aid for states may still be negotiated in return for something else Republicans want, it won’t be anywhere near what governors like Sisolak had counted on.

So the smart thing to do would be for Sisolak to immediately lift all his China Cootie restrictions to get the economy here humming again.  40% of Nevada state tax revenues come from tourism, and while tourism might remain reduced from Sino Snot Storm fear, we had overwhelming demand in the first days after the casinos reopened in early June.

Unfortunately, tourist numbers fell off sharply when word got out that nightclubs, strip clubs, bars, shows, topless pools and many restaurants remain closed, live music is banned on Fremont Street, and that masks are required everywhere, even at the pool.  It’s so bad that even Wynn is sending out buy-one-get-one-free offers.  People come to Las Vegas for a party, and there’s no party to be found here now.  There is basically nothing to do in Vegas but gamble and struggle to breathe through your mask, and people can do that at home.

If Sisolak doesn’t reopen the party, he will have to start serious budget cuts, primarily by laying off teachers, his most important voting bloc.  He might even have to sell his brand new private jet.

So will he let Vegas be Vegas again?  No.  The reason is that Sisolak just used an unconstitutional process to ram a mail-in voting and ballot-harvesting bill through the state legislature.  The lawsuits are already filed and the new law will never hold up in court, but until the court actually rejects it, Sisolak has to pretend there’s a deadly pandemic going on here.

The DNC needs massive vote fraud to have any hope of getting their Alzheimer’s case into the White House.  So Sisolak will just keep digging that hole.

I said there would be a grim amusement to be had in watching Sisolak bust out the state and destroy all the people who voted for him.