For months, we have been discussing how Democratic politicians would deal with massive reparation demands after campaigning for years on such payments being a moral imperative. As proposals rose to as much as $5 million a person, Newsom went silent. Now, California’s Reparations Task Force has issued recommendations for reparation payments as well as a slew of other benefits for black citizens. Newsom has finally responded by what sounded like the common birthday card that reads “I couldn’t afford a present so I gave you this card instead.” With California billions in the red, Newsom appears to be sending up a trial balloon on offering heartfelt apologies, promises of reform, and no cash.
In addition to the cash payments, the Task Force called for eligible residents to receive $13,619 for each year of residency due to racism in health care; $148,099 or $3,366 for each year between 1933 and 1977 for housing discrimination; and $2,352 during the 49-year period between 1971 and 2020 for mass incarceration and racist policing.
Newsom told Fox News Digital that reparation”is about much more than cash payments.” Instead, he stressed:
“we’ve already been hard at work addressing: breaking down barriers to vote, bolstering resources to address hate, enacting sweeping law enforcement and justice reforms to build trust and safety, strengthening economic mobility — all while investing billions to root out disparities and improve equity in housing, education, healthcare, and well beyond. This work must continue.”
Good luck with that.
Citing “reforms” already in place makes the Task Force look like the ultimate bait-and-switch. It makes black voters look like chumps given recent polling showing a massive shift in the Black community on the question: 77 percent of Black Americans now support reparations.
For years, Newsom and other Democratic politicians have campaigned on reparations and that bill has now come due. A card and an apology is not going to cut it.
Just last week, speakers demanded cash in large amounts. Rep. Barbara Lee (D., Cal.) declared that “Reparations are not a luxury, but a human right long overdue for millions of Americans. We are demanding that the government pay their tax.”
She was not talking about a heartfelt apology.
Nor were others at the hearing.
In prior hearings, speakers have been asking “where’s the money.” Some warned the Democratic task force that they would not vote for the party unless they received money before the 2024 elections.
San Francisco’s board of supervisors is also facing the same expectations after a recommendation of its African American Reparations Advisory Committee to give $5 million to each eligible Black resident as reparations.
Some balked at even that figure. 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.”
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.
Even Disney has gotten into the act with a controversial children’s episode in which cartoon children demand reparations.
The years of calls for reparations have created a greater expectation, even an urgency. One well-known California activist declared: “It’s a debt that’s owed, we worked for free. We’re not asking; we’re telling you.”
As I wrote earlier, this bill has come due for Newsom and he now appears to be making the long-awaited pivot away from payments. As expected, it is a bit late for the pivot after politicking on the issue for years to gain votes.
As one minister declared at the hearing last week, “Tell Governor Newsom we’re coming. He knows me.”
Poor people are poor, largely because they make the wrong choices. The could have walked out the door and turned left and spent 20 minutes walking to work and reporting for their shift, but they turn right, walk 2 hours, to stand in line for 12 hours to buy tickets they cant afford to t Taylor Swift concert.
And they do stuff like that a dozen times a day.
That facts are clear. Slaves and thier ancestors, that showed up in the North American Continent 400 years ago, fared better than Blacks that never left Africa, or ended up anyplace else. Blacks have already gotten the Golden Ring. But the race grifters have gotten rich of the sweat of all the blacks by lying to them. So the lies continue.
First of all the Democrats love to play checkers in stead of chess with such shortsighted moves as setting up reparation boards which will never be able to deliver the promised money. They never think about what will happen down the road. Another example is the “Green” Movement. The same state, CA, put out a new law that will make gas powered cars illegal in 2030 and the VERY SAME DAY told people to use less electricity during the day due to a shortage of electric power, and they are closing their nukes. They just use feelings and not logic.
One part of me worries that besides just being idiots that pander the Democrats may be playing a really nefarious game of anger the blacks. The Dems make these outlandish promises that they know they can’t keep, they get the black population really riled up and they cause more strife and division in our country as a way to keep things hot and to be able to yell inanities like MAGA all the time.
As an aside, race relations had been getting better every year since the 1960s, new laws, new feelings, new and more accommodations, more assimilation and more comity between the races…and then Obama came into office. Obama had a chance to unite the country even more, to move the parity ball down the field and to get us to a truly new era, but he took the opposite tack. Since then the Democrats have been using race a cudgel and it has made race relations the worst they have been in 50 years. The summer of 2020 was all about bringing Trump down thru chaos, not the killing of one man by one man. Does anyone think that George Floyd’s death was equivalent to the killing of MLK? Of course not. Now we have riots in NY because some poor marine had to fend off a car full of innocents against a mental patient that had FORTY-FOUR PRIOR ARRESTS. The marine is the victim here and if he wasn’t white it would not be a story and if you don’t believe me go read the Trans lunatic’s manifesto from TN. That’s right, it has not been released.
Several years ago the UN suggested the US should pay reparations not in the form of cash but as education and rehabilitation and I would agree at least on principle. There is a huge segment of our society that just can’t get ahead. On the other hand I don’t know if that segment of society would even value that form of reparations or whether anyone would know how to structure it. One thing that will not work is throwing cash (that nobody has anyway) at the problem.
deboluccia, I am not attacking your basic point but don’t we already have affirmative action in order to make education more available to black folks? Haven’t we had this for 50 or 60 years? Have your kid try to get into a good school with an average GPA and SAT as compared to a black kid’s scores and tell me the results.
deboluccia: “Education and rehabilitation”? Been there, tried that. It’s called affirmative action. Apparently, crime pays more.
“There is a huge segment of our society that just can’t get ahead”
Can you please explain who this huge segment is, and why they can’t “get ahead”?
Seems like a good use for all the BLM land laying fallow and the “Adopt a burro” program. Divvy it up into 40 acre parcels, one mule per plot.
$14 Trillion ??? Governor Hair Gel should pay them in Bitcoin. Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.
I think governor Jack a$$ just realized his state is $22 billion in debt. Oh yeah, we don’t have any money.
Reparations are also about blocking subway cars, looting, destroying private property, and destroying businesses in minority neighborhoods. Progressive activists have done so much for the rubes – I mean PoC – how can they expect money. Just keep voting for progressives, you rube kids will graduate from high school with high honors but unable to read.
These events call up an episode of the M.A.S.H. tv series. Corporal Klinger (Jamie Farr) in a dress has just been turned down again by Colonel Potter (Harry Morgan) for medical discharge in in the colonel’s office. Leaving, Klinger turns and says “I’ll be back.”. Potter behind his desk looks him in the eye with Harry Morgan’s signature deadpan stare, and replies “I’ll be here”.
Hilarious!
It’s all fun and games until you have to pay the piper.
Who’s the bigger fools? The National Socialist who came up with the idea or the people who actually thought that they were getting more free money?
No one has promised blacks so much since LBJ’s War on Poverty.
No one owes you anything.
Everything Newsom does should be viewed through the lens of his plan to run for POTUS. He appears to be a vote-seeking machine without a soul. He wants to make all of America into one large downtown SF or LA, full of crime, homelessness, and open drug use. He might just succeed.
Well, the Dims made the promise of reparations, so I think all registered dims should pay up. As far as the activist claiming they worked for free. Last I heard slavery ended in this country in 1865. If you worked for free after that, then that’s on you. We have Irish on both sides or our family and Catholics and Scots, so we want our cut. Only I want 40 acres and the mule (they’re great for photographs in the front yard). The Dims promises on reparations are about as worthwhile as the promises made by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 (also a Dim) when he promised the NAACP and other African American organizations that he would advance their people and issues and then promptly purged them from all federal jobs. You might say they made a bad choice.
Lastly 400-500 thousand union lives lost and thousands more maimed for life between 1861-1865. I wonder what the going rate is for those lives.
Throughout history all our ethnicities and races got screwed in one way or the other. If you want to live in the past, then that’s your problem. Life is too short to live there.
Democrats using standard fascist tactics of using minority issues to seize ever more power!
Trillions have been spent uplifting these people and many others…they appear to BLAME all their problems on what effected their great, great, great, great grand parents. Maybe they should be aware that PEOPLE of all colors can be poor and hard done. If people don’t like being in America…LEAVE
WE OWE YOU NOTHING! Heck you should be paying US back for all the wasted trillions! If you want to be treated as a GROUP…maybe you should be arrested for the all the CRIMES committed by your GROUP! over 50 % of murders are committed by a young black males, who are 3% of the population. There are Black Billionaires, a previous president was black, etc
Time to END all RACE and Gender based preferences…they are illegal.
Time to end federal aid to cities, states and colleges….it is just being stolen by Democrats!
To all eligible residents: I Owe You a big greasy wad of cash. Stay sick, turn Blue. Love, Governor Hair Gel.
I heard Bob Johnson in a CNBC interview say that $14 trillion was the proper amount. It’s interesting, because Johnson said he would vote for Trump, not Biden, in 2020. Johnson knew that Trump was friendly to business, and that the puppet masters behind Biden hate it. The past two years have borne this out. So, the conclusion one must reach is, if you want $14 trillion available for reparations, then vote for Trump, or another like-minded Republican, in 2024 to get the economy going again so the country can afford to pay that amount.
A relatively small amount of people has created a tsunami of trouble for this country. This will not end well. Virtue signaling and vote-buying…not good.
This is downright comical. The left does this BS all the time. Promise them the moon to get votes, and then slam the door in their face. Only this time I am afraid he is not going to put this rabid animal back in its cage. He is going to have riots on his hands- these people are not negotiating- they are demanding. Oh, this is going to be a show.
My early ancestress on my mother’s father’s side was sent here under involuntary indenture to the Governor of Virginia, where she was made to be his mistress as well as housemaid. Where’s mine?
Give each one 40 acres and let them build their empire just as the ancestors did.
How about 40 acres and a pair of Christian Louboutin mules? They go for about 800 bucks at Neiman-Marcus.
aynrandish says:
“Never has there ever been such a large group of people who have been manipulated and controlled as America’s black population.”
Ayn,
Have you seen what’s sitting at the border?
I’m totally fine with paying reparations to the actual victims of slavery. Lumping social idioms into a present-day payment system raises the broader question of how the recipients are defined and do their decedents also receive payments, perhaps at birth? How long does this never-ending apology continue, moving forward as this is a completion backwards movement?
No problem, create a State Trust to handle the reparations, collect funds and issue, say, perpetuities or 100 year maturing bonds, with very low coupons. These bonds would be distributed as reparations. The low coupon will be set to match how much can be realistically raised. In the limit, have a zero coupon bond, making the value of the bond almost entirely fiat (how much you can sell the bond for on the secondary market).
Of course, this is not as nice as a seven or more figures check, but such check would bounce anyway.
Never has there ever been such a large group of people who have been manipulated and controlled as America’s black population. Of course many do think for themselves but there is this huge expectation that all black people will stick together or else be exploited when their cohesion is actually aiding their manipulators. Will we ever solve this?