the now, this is a story that unfolds in three parts. first, the fraud.st yes just yesterday, wete learned tht nearly four hundred department of homeland security employees took pandemiarly 400c unemploymt even though they were working. but my friends, this is justinyc a teeny tiny fraction of the massive in brazen coviden theft that has occurred since d the government started doling out billions in so-called relief. the official who s in chargeh of overseeing the distribution of the relieributionf has calleh the biggest fraud inbigges a generation. t frau it was the theft of asc as 80 billion dollars, or about 10% of the eight hundred billion dollars that was handed out in that paycheck protection program. now,in tha remember, that s on l the 90 billion to four hundredio billion believed to have been stolen from the nine hundred billion covid unemploy payment relief program. that s a lot of money. the second part of this story surrounds the tidal wave of inflatiotle n tha
broadway i saw the empire state lay low life went on beyond the palisades they all bought cadillacs left there long ago to tell the world about the way the light went out to keep the memory alive it s all these human emotions. for some reason we can tap into that as musicians. when we came up with this idea of doing this series of in-depth interviews with really extraordinary people we started thinking about whom we should try to get and whom we should ask. and we thought about the usual political figures, obama, the dali lama. and i come back to the idea of interviewing the person i really wanted to interview, and that was billy joel. and the reason is i ve been in love with his music ever since i was a teenager growing up in india. billy joel has been a rockstar for five decades. today he keeps up his nearly ten-yearlong residency at madison square garden playing the piano and belting out the lyrics that so many fans adore. he s sold more than 150 million reco
get started today. we are now just hours away from the house taking its final vote on president biden s landmark $1.9 trillion covid relief legislation. the final passage tomorrow expected along party lines. of course doubtful any republicans will support it. the president says he ll sign the bill into law as soon as it gets into his desk. stimulus checks will be in the hands of needy americans in the next few weeks. and queen elizabeth saying she s saddened at meghan and harry bombshell accusations. we are likely hours away from president biden s massive covid relief bill passing. that means $1,400 checks to struggling americans, billions of dollars for vaccines and covid testing. as biden once said to the former president barack obama, this is a big eff ing dealing. this is the key piece of legislation they knew they wanted to they didn t have to scale down the scope and size. it remains a $1.9 trillion investment. it did lose some pieces. it lost the $15 minimum wage.
of californiang his would be paying his workers $20 an hour, but he s only paying his worker20s $16 an hour at boh of his restaurants. so this is just hypocrisy it s absurd and it s giving an unbelievable amount of power to thig pos fast food counciltoe that s written into the bill b that has they have powerson that go way beyond work, wagesff our violations, any of that stuff. it s just about more layers of power s of pow and hurting the small business. oh, yeah, sure. sorry, jim, can you can you top that. i think the like i think it s a really good thing because lyft and uber are leaving minneapolie theyeav if this doesn t go through by july 1st, if they do it on july 1st, they got to leave, which i thin which ik is great e i m a big supporter of drunk drivinvingg. m with i think the problem with lifted over is people and l lyft. d they cal by this way, if they do leave, people will get back to doing what they do wil bac best, which is having a few drinks and getting on the hig
e factoid. so, laura , this is exactly why we read the w bill legislation and everyone and come to our website and open the books .com and sign the petition, which would give a seventy two hour legislative time out. so our legislators would simply read the bill . so the people, the politiciansth ,the pundits, so we can see what s in these massive things.. think about the two trillionres carers act that was passed at the height of the pandemic ind o march, aprildy, and nobody in t what was in there up to four hundred million dollars worth of initial paycheck protection program loans. 95% of those turned into grants were paid to companies owned by the chinese communist party, like marco rubio oute of florida. got thatn stopped on the nexto covid a bill.bill b but that s that ut that s whs w. to read the bill . laura jason , you were there. happened and i know this has happened soo many times that you want turo pull your hair out and i hear this about china, you know, getting any benefi