Fat Cats Gorge at Paycheck Protection Program Trough

Look at the bright side. The demented lockdown is bankrupting small businesses right and left, but at least operations big enough to get a seat at the table are making out well. Take the Los Angeles Lakers, for example:

Forbes estimated last year that the team earned $147 million in 2018 and would fetch about $3.7 billion in a sale. …

The Lakers, as ESPN reported on Monday, received $4.6 million in bailout funds from the federal government as part of the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program meant to backstop struggling small businesses sideswiped by Covid-19. The Lakers operation has fewer than 500 employees, which qualifies it as a small business under the government’s aid guidelines.

Shamed by public exposure, the Lakers say they returned the $4.6 million.

As for the small businesses bearing the brunt of the authoritarian overreaction to COVID-19,

only an insignificant percentage — 5% or less — of U.S. small businesses appear to have received funding from the problem-riddled program … much of it, according to Bloomberg News, hasn’t even found its way to small businesses in regions most severely derailed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet pols seem to think it reasonable to shut down commerce indefinitely on the grounds that there will be baskets of free money for everybody.

The Lakers weren’t the only undeserving pig to shove aside small businesses and get its snout into the federal trough.

The Associated Press reported that at least 94 PPP recipients were publicly traded companies with market values greater than $100 million. … The AP also said that its review “found examples of companies that had foreign owners and that were delisted from U.S. stock exchanges, or threatened with removal, because of their poor stock performance before the coronavirus hit. Other companies have had annual losses for years.”

Even massive outfits like AutoNation have climbed aboard the gravy train; due to a loophole, this “national network of automobile dealers with 26,000 employees and a $3.2 billion market valuation, received $77 million in PPP funding.”

Other lucky recipients of free PPP cash include Shake Shack, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, and Cinedigm Corporation, “an entertainment company controlled by a Chinese investment firm.” That a penny would go to the ChiComs who inflicted this virus is intolerable.

Speaking of intolerable, likeminded Harvard University, bloated with a $40 billion endowment, took $9 million from the CARES Act. Like the Lakers, this gilded bastion of liberal elitism was shamed into giving it back.

As we learned from the looting spree known as Obama’s “stimulus” bill, Big Government cannot be trusted to dispense other people’s money in a reasonable manner.

If the government had not inflicted the unwarranted not to mention tyrannical lockdowns, small businesses would not need the money that we now see pouring into the pockets of fat cats; in a free country, they could create their own wealth, which is their purpose.

Harry Browne used to say that Big Government breaks your leg, hands you a crutch, and then expects gratitude. Actually, it breaks both your legs, hands a golden crutch to someone who doesn’t need it, and then bills your grandchildren for it.

On tips from Ellen O and Lyle.

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