A Country Moved on From Grants

• Author: Bryan Miller
• Posted: 2024-03-05

If you were to judge the grant system by the year 2020, then you might be under the impression that the United States government and a lot of private businesses are very generous and truly care about people's suffering. Then again, if you were to judge the grant system by the year 2021, while the pandemic is still technically going on, then you would likely come away with a different feeling entirely. Your perception might be that the government doesn't actually care about the people who elect it into power and whose taxes pay for its existence. You might look up and see that the United States has entirely moved on from helping its own citizens with grants, while they now attempt to give boatloads of money to people who aren't even American citizens. Nobody really knows what happened to America's COVID grants; most just assume that they're gone now. Another bridge to nowhere.

There are tens of thousands of Americans currently who have grant applications out that have never been approved or denied, and thousands of Americans who were told that they would receive a grant, only to then be told that the money was gone and the pool needed to be refilled. You can see this specifically in the restaurant industry, where less than a third of struggling restaurants actually got any grant money at all, while the rest were either outright denied or told that the money was gone.

These are actual Americans here. Citizens of the country who pay taxes, follow the law, and who worked hard to keep their businesses going, only to have their own (supposedly) representative government tell them in 2020 that their business had to be closed down for the greater good. Even those lucky few that got to remain open struggled due to the fact that they did not have a customer base. So, the government supposedly put billions upon billions of dollars aside in a grant pool to give these struggling business owners money. Money, of course, that they never received, and nobody knows where it's at now. All people know is that they woke up one day, still waiting for their own government to pay them their own tax money, and they see the government instead planning on giving $450,000 to each illegal immigrant that former President Donald Trump put through Barack Obama's system.

The Initial Push

The initial push for grant payoffs seemed more like a trade-off. You, Average Joe business owner, close down your business and risk it going belly-up in order to protect people from the virus, and your duly elected, fair and honest government will cut you a nice fat grant check to cover your losses. That was basically the quid pro quo. You close down, the government will thus ease your suffering and use your tax money to do so. The American people were forced to live up to their end, with an overreaching government shutting down the entire economy on a whim, without a vote, and without even a warning. So, surely the government would live up to their end, right? Wrong.

About just under 30% of businesses forced closed got any financial relief at all, other than the three different stimulus checks for just over $1,000 each. That means you're looking at over 70% of businesses promised grant relief that never received a penny.

Segmenting Classes

The grant system in 2020 was a lot worse than even the harshest critics realize. According to independent sources and various think tanks, of the 30% of businesses that got grant relief, federal and state governments played favorites with even that small number, disqualifying hordes of applicants based solely on their racial and gender status. Over 85% of minority and female-owned businesses that applied received some form of grant relief, while only around 7% of White male-owned businesses received a penny.

Yes, not only did the American government lie to businesses about the help they would receive, but they even instituted discrimination in handing out the little bit that they did, which goes directly against Constitutional amendments and every single court ruling in the nation since 1968. And what happens to the government as a result? Nothing. Nothing at all. The media doesn't talk about it, politicians aren't asked questions about it, so there's nothing to see here.

Nothing to See Here

Whether you're an advocate for racial justice and this sort of spending or not, the point is that the American government lied to its citizens to enact the "social justice" wealth redistribution that they've long wanted to. They did so by outright stealing money, however, and they continue to be accountable to no one as they plan to give $450,000 to each man, woman and child that Donald Trump put through Barack Obama's immigration system.

And no one can stop it. Americans have zero say in what the government does with their money. If you applied for grants and lost a business, tough luck. You get nothing.