The Government Is Destroying Our Cities, But Trump Might Be Onto A Cure

There are a lot of people on Wall Street and in Washington who see no problem with an America defined by big box stores and chain restaurants.

California released a plan Tuesday to reopen businesses. One thing conspicuously missing from the governor’s slideshow was any sort of timeline, replaced instead by a six-point plan to remake society around fear of the coronavirus. Could be June, he said in a press conference, or even July or August. One thing conspicuously included was the observation that “things will look different,” including restaurants having to open “with fewer tables.”

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom is right that “things will look different”: When our front doors finally swing open and we come out blinking in the sunshine, our cities and towns will be mere husks of what they were just a month ago. Empty storefronts, boarded-up shops, terrible “local art” installations in windows that once showed friends and families laughing over their favorite dish and bottle of wine.

Nine states have issued similar “plans.” Washington, D.C. chimed in Wednesday, extending the shutdown another month. Meanwhile, the House and Senate are fighting when they’re talking at all. The ideas batting about Capitol Hill are more money for leftist projects, more for employees, and more for that last plan that isn’t working. There is, however, a major resource to stop this nightmare that has not been tapped yet — one the president, who has spent far more years as a businessman than politician, teased on Friday.
The Problem

The Senate’s phase III Paycheck Protection Plan funds are “going fast” and set to run out “this week,” one small bank president told The Federalist; not that it mattered much to a lot of restaurants anyway. Politicians’ plan to give small businesses funds on the condition they either pay it back on an impossible deadline or disperse it to their employees wasn’t in their interest for actually surviving this crisis.

As one restaurateur told The Federalist, “My employees are already on unemployment. What am I going to do, hire them all when there’s no work to do, only to have to let them go again in June when the money runs out and we’re still not able to open? Back into the unemployment line, which could be longer by then? That’s not good for any of us.”

The reality is many of the small businesses we love might never open up again. Because even when bars, restaurants, and event spaces, for example, can legally open their doors, how many will be able to? For most of those, profit margins aren’t big.

Do leaders like California’s governor actually, really, honestly think that telling a steakhouse they can only have half as many customers will keep them in business? That the owner of a diner that needs to put six feet between each customer will still get up for work at 3 a.m. every morning? That a man will build a 50-foot bar so he can seat eight patrons? How about the neighborhood Italian or Chinese or Mexican spot that stacked table on table but you didn’t mind because you loved the food and the staff? Or you and your spouse’s favorite cozy little date spot? Gone, shuttered. It isn’t worth it for them to...

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