[ad_1]
Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
An NPR Morning Edition team found that the Small Business Rescue Earned Banks $10 Billion In Fees:
Banks handling the government’s $349 billion loan program for small businesses made more than $10 billion in fees—even as tens of thousands of small businesses were shut out of the program, according to an analysis of financial records by NPR.
The banks took in the fees while processing loans that required less vetting than regular bank loans and had little risk for the banks, the records show. Taxpayers provided the money for the loans, which were guaranteed by the Small Business Administration.
According to a Department of Treasury fact sheet, all federally insured banks and credit unions could process the loans, which ranged in amount from tens of thousands to $10 million. The banks acted essentially as middlemen, sending clients’ loan applications to the SBA, which approved them.
For every transaction made, banks took in 1% to 5% in fees, depending on the amount of the loan, according to government figures. Loans worth less than $350,000 brought in 5% in fees while loans worth anywhere from $2 million to $10 million brought in 1% in fees. […]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”
~~Rita Mae Brown, Alma Mater
At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—Extremist Sunday:
Tomorrow in Louisville Senator Frist and his allies will demonstrate a level of blatant extremism and hate that one thought had been removed from respectable discourse in our country. Now we find it embraced by the Republican Leader of the Senate. Frank Rich has some thoughts:
The fraudulence of “Justice Sunday” begins but does not end with its sham claims to solidarity with the civil rights movement of that era. “The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias,” says the flier for tonight’s show, “and now it is being used against people of faith.” In truth, Bush judicial nominees have been approved in exactly the same numbers as were Clinton second-term nominees. Of the 13 federal appeals courts, 10 already have a majority of Republican appointees. So does the Supreme Court. It’s a lie to argue, as Tom DeLay did last week, that such a judiciary is the “left’s last legislative body,” and that Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, is the poster child for “outrageous” judicial overreach. Our courts are as highly populated by Republicans as the other two branches of government.
The “Justice Sunday” mob is also lying when it claims to despise activist judges as a matter of principle. Only weeks ago it was desperately seeking activist judges who might intervene in the Terri Schiavo case as boldly as Scalia & Co. had in Bush v. Gore. The real “Justice Sunday” agenda lies elsewhere. As Bill Maher summed it up for Jay Leno on the “Tonight” show last week: ” ‘Activist judges’ is a code word for gay.” The judges being verbally tarred and feathered are those who have decriminalized gay sex (in a Supreme Court decision written by Justice Kennedy) as they once did abortion and who countenance marriage rights for same-sex couples. This is the animus that dares not speak its name tonight. To paraphrase the “Justice Sunday” flier, now it’s the anti-filibuster campaign that is being abused to protect bias, this time against gay people.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin says there’s not much polling lower than Trump. But one thing that does is his virus response. Worse than that? Protests & reopening. So that explains the reversal. Ventilator contract SNAFU unraveled. Next crisis: the food supply chain.
RadioPublic|LibSyn|YouTube|Patreon|Square Cash (Share code: Send $5, get $5!)
