By: Mark Glennon*
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle on Thursday announced that the county will be handing out $71 million in grants to “historically excluded businesses.” The grants will be $10,000 each using funds from the federal American Rescue Plan, according to the County’s press release.
The “historically excluded businesses” targeted for the grants will be “those owned by entrepreneurs of color, women, veterans, LGBQT+ and persons with a disability—to close racial wealth and opportunity gaps,” says the county. It’s called the Source Grow Grant program.
“These grants represent a great step forward for Cook County’s small businesses,” said Cook County Commissioner Kevin Morrison. “The Source Grow Grant will go directly towards reducing the racial wealth gap and moving us towards the equity goals we strive for. I’m so proud of the work being done at the Cook County Bureau of Economic Development.”
The grants also will prioritize businesses in sectors heavily impacted by Covid. At $10,000 per grant, some 7,100 businesses will get the handouts. That’s a lot of businesses to identify that have been both “historically excluded” and hurt by Covid.
The new $71 million is in addition to $37 million announced by the County in May for the initial Source Grow program, which was also funded with federal pandemic relief money.
The program will be administered by the Women’s Business Development Center and Allies for Community Business.
Is anybody confident there will be any serious oversight? For that matter, has there been any serious oversight at the federal level for the trillions of dollars of inflationary “pandemic relief” that’s been disbursed?
Finally, programs with racial and other preferences like this may well be seeing their last days. During its new term that just started, the United States Supreme Court is taking up key affirmative action cases, and the sentiment is that the Court will bring preferences as we have known them to an end.
Some commentators are comfortable that at least six of the Court’s nine justices want to end or at least seriously limit affirmative action. “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts earlier. He is a key swing voter on the Court. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
In the case of Cook County’s new program, it’s fair to ask how many of the “historically excluded” businesses that will get the grants really are. Many of their owners are now second or third generation members of the middle or upper income classes. We’ve had fifty years of aggressive affirmative action. Local government purchasing programs and the like for minority owned businesses are about as old. Is there nobody outside those groups at least as disadvantaged as many who are in?
In a later affirmative action case, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a swing vote at the time, wrote that “25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” That was 19 years ago.
And President Obama later said, “if there’s a young white person who has been working hard, struggling, and has overcome great odds, that’s something that should be taken into account.” He cited his daughters as examples of who should not get preferences. “So I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination,” Obama said. “But I think that it can’t be a quota system and it can’t be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is black, or white, or Hispanic, male or female.”
The sun will probably never set on government programs that are poorly designed, but that day may be at hand for programs with group preferences.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
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If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
I think Roberts will cave.
The government picks winners and losers all the time. The backlash and resentment created by racial set asides only serves to divide us more. This is short sighted and these government officials are only buying votes. It would be more fair to go by income, regardless of race. This is a big mistake the Democrats always make. By relying on identity politics, they end up losing an entire segment of the population. The candidates who will embrace color blind populism will go far. Trump had it in 2016, but did not have the will, nor did he hire the staff… Read more »
Straight white males in Chicago/Cook are pathetic. They simply accept the abuse. No self-respect. Do they actually believe they deserve this unfair treatment? Also, no decent father would raise their children in a place where they are blamed for things their ancestors may or may not have done. As for Chicago/Cook, it would serve them right if all the whites left.
The mindset of the Leftist White Male is to believe that other white males deserve this unfair treatment. Why do you think they work so hard at virtue signaling? They want to be excluded from this treatment, but are very willing to dole it out in heaps. I believe that Leftist White Males are also projecting. How many times have you seen a prominent white male Democrat virtue signal #MeToo and express outrage at every symbolic affront to females and then get mired in a sex scandal of their own? You can start with Harvey Weinstein and go down a… Read more »
They also did this with the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. Same guidelines, where everyone but white males were moved to the front of the line for funding. The funding (some $65 billion, with a “b”) was gone in less than a month. Only “minorities” and “disadvantaged” businesses (owned by the same, supposedly) received money. Someone challenged it in court and easily won. But the money had already run out, and the SBA simply said, “so sad, too bad.” This literally happened last year. That was with the Federal Government. Now they are doing it at the county level, and using the… Read more »
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” – Ibram X. Kendi
It’s absolutely a scam, and they’ve stopped hiding it, because it’s gone from “social welfare” to “f you, what are you gonna do about it?”
Michael Jordan’s restaurant would get priority in this scheme, and receive millions of dollars, whereas some working class diner in central Illinois owned by an older white man who cooks at the grill would be last in line.
Are you applying for this grant?
I DO NOT see affirmative action in the Constitution, that bs needs to go. We are a colorblind society now.
The framers of the 14th and 15th Amendments clearly disagree with you and approved of race-conscious solutions.
Yes, we all know the newest affirmative action SCOTUS appointee the other day argued that the framers would be OK with race conscious laws because the 13th and 14th amendments are race conscious laws. This new nonsense is called Progressive Originalism. The constitution is just a piece of paper to the progressive. It stands in the way of their destruction of the existing order. They can ascribe any meaning to any thing they want to make it their will. They can ignore massive historical evidence the regarding the freeman/slave aspect of the 13th and 14th amendments and lie to say… Read more »
Anyone who’s opened a business knows that $10k will hardly get someone through the incorporation and licensing costs. A total waste of money thrown at folks who wouldn’t know how to open a business in the first place. Nothing you’d learn with $10k and a total waste of these funds !
Wirepoints readers better also be stackers because it will soon be cheaper to wipe you dupa with dollar bills than buy toilet paper with them.
ARPA was signed over 18 months ago. How did it take this long to distribute whatever is left? And what’s the point now as these funds were needed last year and have lost significant value due to inflation.
States & individuals are still flush with fed covid $cash$, consumer spending hasn’t dropped. Which is masking over debt/inflation/interest rate tsunami which has already hit my rinkie-dink 401k….it’s going to be real ugly, especially in pension bankrupt ill/chi, in 6 months when all the covid $ cash is gone and the feds can’t bail us out. Here’s a recent wolf steet: https://wolfstreet.com/2022/09/30/flush-with-pandemic-cash-tax-revenues-states-cities-throw-money-around-congress-too-is-it-a-surprise-consumers-outspent-this-raging-inflation/
Affirmative Action was one of the biggest hoaxes pulled on taxpayers. So called leveling of the playing field has resulted in incompetent, non qualified people being placed in positions of importance without any clue about how to do the job they were hired for.
Spot on , queue Kamala….
Komrad Kamala….the little fat man in his hermit kingdom was so overjoyed with his new found allies that he shot a few celebratory ballistic missiles in honor of the occasion!
How could these businesses have survived if they were excluded?
If you are a straight white male, can you continue to compete in an environment that takes your taxes and gives it to your competition? I don’t think any business model could survive for long under those circumstances.
Time to fight fire with fire…
They just need to *identify* as one of the *marginalized* classes of people…
On the downside tho, once you accept government money, you must dance to their tunes…
It’s a federal crime, punishable by prison time, to identify ‘incorrectly’ when applying for minority or marginalized subsidies.
Was Elizabeth Warren ever indicated?
Obama? Didn’t he apply as a foreign student?
Can there be a class action discrimination.suit brought by white business owners?
This sounds like the idea of a gay black woman.