Politics

“Where’s the Money?”: California Reparations Board Confronted to Make Good on Years of Reparation Rhetoric

I recently wrote a column on how Democrats in California are being challenged to put their money where their mouth has been on reparations. For years, Democrats have insisted that reparations are a moral imperative. Now, however, the bill has come due and advocates in a Wednesday hearing confronted members of the California Reparations Task Force in asking “where’s the money?” Some are now demanding more than $5 million per resident as Reparations Board member Lisa Holder of the Equal Justice Society promised that the committee’s “recommendations will be breathtaking.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) created the Reparations Task Force, which just reached its own recommendations for $223,000 per person. Others have insisted the figure should be $350,000 for individuals and another $250,000 for Black-owned businesses. One California politician insisted the figure needs to be $800,000 per person, reflecting the average cost of a home in the state. In the meantime, a similar board has recommended $5 million payments to eligible residents of San Fransisco.

Notably, California’s law expressly states that this money should not be treated as compensation for federal reparations. That raises the question of whether a resident could receive $5 million from San Francisco, $223,000 from the state, and additional payments from the federal government.

Some congressional Democrats have pushed for similar federal reparations and passed a bill out of the House Judiciary Committee in 2021 that failed to receive a floor vote. BET founder Robert Johnson has called for $14 trillion in federal reparations.

In the hearing on Wednesday, the growing expectation and impatience was evident among witnesses. Yet, some reparations advocates in cities with even smaller reparation programs admit that they do not know how cities will fund the payouts.

One witness described the payments of $5 million per person as “nothing” and “too little.” The correct figure was suggested as more like $7.6 million.

Reverend Tony Pierce asked “Where’s the money? Where’s the cash? Where’s the check?” “$5 million, San Francisco’s already made a move. $5 million is nothing.” Pierce mocked the notion of $5 million if it is “spread over 50 years would only amount to $100,000 year, and then with taxes, you’ll be lucky if you end up with $40,000 a year.”  He also rejected the notion of $223,000 for housing as woefully inadequate.

For her part, Holder is pledging “breathtaking” reparation payments, including “monetary compensation to Black people who are descendants of enslaved and persecuted Black Americans.”

Those continued assurances are fueling demands for the money without further delay. After years of being told that the payments are moral imperatives, many are losing patience. In a prior hearing, one well-known California activist declared in a prior hearing that “It’s a debt that’s owed, we worked for free. We’re not asking; we’re telling you.”

Despite Gov. Newsom’s underestimating the state debt figures by billions, this bill has now come due and many critics are challenging the left to show that the prior pledges were not mere political opportunism or virtue signaling. California is set to face the true costs of these pledges and many are in no mood to haggle over price.

In other words, California Democrats may have finally reached the “show me the money” moment.

 

82 thoughts on ““Where’s the Money?”: California Reparations Board Confronted to Make Good on Years of Reparation Rhetoric”

  1. From a piece published by the History Channel about the Irish immigrants:
    “The discrimination faced by the famine refugees was not subtle or insidious. It was right there in black and white, in newspaper classified advertisements that blared “No Irish Need Apply.” The image of the simian Irishman, imported from Victorian England, was given new life by the pens of illustrators such as Thomas Nast that dripped with prejudice as they sketched Celtic ape-men with sloping foreheads and monstrous appearances.” https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis
    Those were my ancestors. I want my $5M too.

  2. Talk is cheap, or so they say. There is in fact a high cost in credibility. The only way that such numbers can be realized is through massive inflation. Remember how Weimar Germany got past reparations bills for WWI. They paid it with meaningless money, inflated into nothing.

    Unfortunately, this bidding war with money no one has doesn’t end well.

  3. Every analysis I have seen, shows blacks sold by blacks that then left the continent, economically, created better lives for their ancestors. Even more so, for those blacks lucky enough to make it to North America.

    This is a common statistical slight of hand (lies, damn lies, statistics). We have been 100 years giving blacks “a hand up”.
    Accomplishing nothing but destroying the black family, and community.
    More of the same will be an extinction level event.

  4. As I and other commentators have noted, it is about time self-righteous, rich, white progressives should put up or shut up with their virtue signaling. I want every SF resident currently residing in the City to be compelled to pay for these reparations throughout the duration. Moving out of the City should not be an option to escape payment. If necessary, the super affluent progressives should be compelled to surrender second homes if they own one. They cannot be allowed to export their demented policies and associated monetary burdens to anyone or any business outside their jurisdiction. Let us see how dedicated they are too social justice under those circumstances!

  5. The dems gotta hurry up with this. We’re seeing urban communities transformed for the better in many many cases by the influx of illegals – people are coming here, many without having yet learned the language, and they are starting to prosper. They have formed communities, they support each other and their children, and they are starting businesses. These new Americans are gentrifying many black areas. These new Americans do get the same kind of “support” from local governments that the ‘indigenous’ population gets, often.

    So before this becomes a reality to the consciousness of most Americans, the blacks have to assert their victimhood claim for the pot of gold – otherwise even the biggest dolts in the US will realize what a scam reparations are.

  6. Three things this country will NEVER run out of are bone-headed stupidity, greed, and crooked politicians bent on exploiting the first two.

  7. Imagine a neighborhood with 100 homes, 13 of them black households, and then the checks going out to only the citizens (or any black?) that are or claim to be black. The other 87 households will be rightly upset and they will rightly go against the party committing this racist act. The rest of us will suffer from rampant inflation due to this massive influx of cash rendering what we have now as less and less than it was prior to this Democrat action.

    Only a party led by Biden, Harris, Newsome, Warren, Omar, AOC, Markey, etc etc could come up with a plan to upset 87% of the people to keep appeasing the 13% that votes for them at the highest rate. When the Asians quit, the Hispanics quit, the Jews quit and the whites quit that 90% voting record of blacks will lose it’s luster and maybe the Democrats will wake up.

    Of course this could just be another way that the Democrats are showing us how stupid they are by championing this ruinous idea to appease their favored minority class and never thinking it through that someday hey, these fools will want their money. They play checkers instead of chess and they didn’t plan for the day of reckoning…and now it is here.

    2. ALL WELL PROCEED

      Congress may not fund that which it may not tax for.

      Congress may tax for ONLY debt, defense and general Welfare.

      The ONLY welfare that is general (i.e. the whole or all) is infrastructure that all people use such as roads, water, post office, electricity, internet, sewer, police, fire, courts, etc.

      Individuals are maximally free while government is severely limited and restricted.
      ________________________________________________________________

      Article 1, Section 8

      The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States;…

  9. where is the money? Taxpayers….Democrats KNOW they can DRAIN taxpayers pockets.
    Democrats are Fascists…where NOTHING is TOO EVIL

  10. My question is this: Where are the reparations from freed slaves and their descendants for the 100s of thousands of white lives lost fighting the war that freed them? Where is the calculation to show the contrast between the economic and longevity between the possible alternate outcome of never coming to America vs the benefits of life in America in a far more developed society where cutting edge technology, agriculture, healthcare, and infrastructure existed, …..and relative peace in society vs tribal warfare and enslavement in Africa during the same time period?

    1. my question when do I get paid back the TRILLIONS the black community wasted and destroy for the last 60 years!

      1. Guy, I did the calculation. I read somewhere that the total for AFDC, EEOC, subsidized housing, etc. to the black community comes to about $17 trillion over the last, say, 60 years. Assuming there are 330 million Americans, and we subtract 13% for the blacks who will already be repaired, your check comes to $59,212.82. Each of your family members can also expect as much.

        Now, you owe the federal government’s creditors $95,910.64 as of five minutes ago, so net-net, you still owe about $36,700 of federal debt.

        Sorry for being a buzz kill. I guess my main bullet point is that we’re so far in the hole, it no longer matters what we owe. We’re doomed anyway.

  12. Assuming the reparation issue gets some pre-2024 election traction outside of California and it becomes a real national issue, Lunch Bucket/Truck Driver/Corn Pop Ass Kicker Joe (aka: Mr. Sniffer Whiffer) will blame President Trump and the MAGA Republicans when they don’t receive their “due”. It’s their winning 2024 election strategy to keep the White House !!! Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.

  14. The great thing is I’ve finally started identifying as Black descendent of slave. Through extensive research and pondering, I’ve discovered that my family history clearly indicates that there are few if any records on my paternal great-great-great-grandfather because he was brought to the US and enslaved.

    I’m glad to be getting a bunch of money from all of those racist, misogynist, sexist San Franciscans and Californians to help alleviate the burden my family and I have endured having to repress this part of my identity. As a matter of fact, all of the times myself or my family wasn’t promoted in a job or given entry to a college for which we were clearly not qualified is because they realized our ancestry and used my heritage and skin color against me. Bring on the money, free housing, and even the Obama-phone I never got!!!!!

    1. Democrats are fighting a 2nd Civil War…and this time the Party should be Abolished….1 Civil War is too many

  17. I think the real issue is “Where’s the Sanity?” California has become a giant lunatic asylum, and some other states are close behind.

  18. People in a state that didn’t have slavery and have never been slaves to get paid reparations by people that never owned slaves.

    1. Complete nonsense isn’t it. The National Socialist Democrat WOKE Party put themselves in a corner on this one.

      Probably thinking the US Taxpayer will pick up the tab.

      Another entitlement for the 13%.

  19. Of all the ways to divide people of this country farther, this will be the nail in the coffin. The hate and resentment from reparations will be devastating.

  20. Japanese, Germans, and Italians were actually put in internment camps in California. In contrast, no Californian was ever enslaved. It seems to me reparations or perhaps do the Japanese, Germans and Italians who are actual victims in California.

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