Month: April 2020

Leave it to the Federal Government to screw up a good thing for the citizens of the United States. The Paycheck Protection Program designed to help small businesses to pay their employees during the shutdown, of course got abused. The Federal Government again proved probably for the 1,000 time it can not be responsible for spending money! It makes you wonder what the bank accounts of these fools look like, oh wait, their all loaded.

Both parties seem to take the stance of, let’s just throw money at the wall and see what sticks. No less than 75 publicly traded companies received money from the PPP. Another part of the CARES act allowed universities to take advantage of the program as well. This has been a fast moving story so even as I was researching things have changed. It seems the public outrage has changed the mind of some of these big businesses to take the loan. Steak Shake took a loan and returned it. Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse a company that had sales of $441 million last year took $20 million and has decided to return it. Harvard University which is sitting on $41 million in endowments took $9 million and it took President Trump calling them out on national T.V. for them to return the money.

So we know some of the who, now for the how did it happen. In a Vox article I found this about the bill. As written in the legislation, any business that’s classified as an accommodation or food service that has 500 or fewer employees at its individual locations, is eligible. Senator Marco Rubio even said that they were lobbied by industry groups to give the bill a gray area. He called out some of these companies, great you called them out, thanks a lot!! So throw in the lobbyist groups circling around Washington D.C. like vultures for their cause, smells like trouble to me!

Let’s talk about franchises for a moment. You have a parent company, let’s say McDonald’s. They give the franchisee the right and ability to sell their product at a location for a fee, that is paid to the parent company every year. Basically, free money that looks good on your bottom line and the stock reports. In this example McDonald’s total revenue for 2018 was $21 billion and earnings were $5.9 billion. So do the parent companies of these franchisee’s think so little of them that they need to lobby Congress to put in a gray area into the Cares Act to take advantage of, or are they greedy? You see all over T.V. our drive thru is still open, no commercials on how they are helping their franchisees stay open. I deliver buns to three Burger Kings during my work day. A month into the pandemic, their bun orders are right about to pre-pandemic orders. Their lobbies are still closed!

Here is my take. Congress again shows it is the problem! How much money was paid to them for the gray area in the Cares Act. As a group they proved again why there should be term limits. They can’t effectively come up with a bill to help the small businesses without the lobbyists greasy hands out. Our elected leaders don’t seem to understand business, wait, probably don’t care! I am going to jump up and down in public for the people then tow the party line when it comes time for the vote for the bill. The election is coming up, we need to remember these last few months and what Congress didn’t do for us, the little guy!!

So here in Cincinnati we are four weeks into what I call, shit hitting the fan! As a bread vendor, we are essential, so we do not get to stay home. It’s business as usual and business has been more than usual. We see people everyday have interaction and get to hear what other folks are doing during this unusual time.

First off let’s mention Congress, which seems to be one of my pet peeves. They came together to work on the stimulus bill, well do you think it would be bi-partisan? No that did not happen!! Democrats kept trying to add “pork” to the bill which was totally unrelated to the situation at hand. The Kennedy Center got $25 million from the bill. Please tell me how the Kennedy Center is related to the Covid 19 pandemic? To top it off, Nancy Pelosi managed to get $5 million of the $25 million to go directly to the Democrat National Committee. What the hell!! Thanks for thinking of the American citizens out of work!!

The media still tries to dump on President Trump, this is 3 1/2 years later. I find it very odd that all of the former Presidents have been quiet on this pandemic. Anyway the media continues to try and paint President Trump in any bad light whenever possible. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine the malaria drugs have shown promise to stop Covid 19. President Trump mentioned there could be hope using these drugs, the media said you are giving people a false hope. He talked about the possible death toll, you are being too dark, not giving anyone any hope! Nancy Pelosi said he could have 200,000 deaths, blood on his hands! So here we are per usual, the blame game instead of working to come up with solutions to the problem. OK Nancy you have been a “leader” cough, cough in this country for 37 years and you have sat back, probably counting your hundred dollar bills, while 40,000 Americans die from the flu each year. A little quick math tells me that there were 1,480,000 deaths from the flu in that time, you did nothing about. It seems to me, since you have seen it all, you could have been ahead of the curve but chose to follow rather than be a leader!! So now sitting back in your Speakers chair you can lay blame at the feet of someone that had nothing to do with the pandemic other than to react to it.

Let’s jump back to December 30th 2019. I woke up to a scratchy throat. I rarely get sick and most years go the whole year with not more than a sniffle. So Tuesday the 31st I woke up to the full blown flu, fever, weakness. I worked all day, because I own my business, head down and plow thru. Upon getting home at 4:00 pm I went right to bed and was in and out of sleep until 9:00 pm. I broke the fever at that point, the fever came back at least two times thru the night which my body broke the fever each time. Wednesday I woke up feeling better but I had what I call the “stupid cough”. It was a cough with nothing behind it. I kept the cough for two weeks after it started.

My best friend in Pennsylvania had the stupid cough the week before Christmas. The back door receiver at the Walmart we service had the stupid cough for two weeks after Christmas. One other bread vendor we see on a daily basis had the full blown flu complete with shortness of breath for four weeks from Christmas. I deliver to a Big Lots where the gentleman who generally verifies my delivery talked about his recent bout with the flu. Him and all of his co-workers all developed the flu complete with the stupid cough and at one point all called off from work. A Burger King employee double pink eye, respiratory issues, flu like symptoms was bed ridden for two weeks. The general manager got sick as well with respiratory issues. If any of you have done research into Covid 19 there seems to be a lot of common symptoms with this virus that we all seem to have contracted. It is as if Covid 19 was already here………….

Another bread vendor we work with has another story. Part of his route is in downtown Cincinnati. The hospitals are in that area and he delivers to one of them, what do you think is going on there? Not much, it is quiet, not panic, not ambulances running in constantly. My wife has a friend, his wife is a nurse. They are not working crazy hours. Workers have been asked to go home.

There is no, here is my take this time. Just real people with real stories and observations. You come up with your own take!! Happy Easter everyone, stay safe!!