Apathy Wins

Started trawling through the PPP dataset and decided to focus on Bentonville based loans.  That was a mistake.  So many businesses that I know thrived during the pandemic or otherwise took advantage of the PPP loan program.  Business where the owner has been publicly hateful to minorities.  Or dismissive of any social program that helps people since they hate socialism for everyone else but themselves.  So much damn money and all of it forgiven.  Just a straight up wealth transfer on the backs of those who pay taxes.... 1/2 a million for the local restruant owner who was anti-korean.  20k for a "consultant" who looks to have did it just to get a loan.

And when I talked about it with friends I got two reactions.  Sympathetic sounds and apathy.  I have a bit of a sample bias going on since I'm talking to my own set of friends.  The sympathetic sounds part was good.  My friends doing what they can to de-ruffle my feathers.  But the apathy was just too much.  I don't have the reserves to give a St Crispins Day speech and somehow make the world be right.  It just ain't my wheelhouse.  So this leaves me drained and even more disappointed in our system.  

In any case here is the Bentonville specific dataset I put together.