California politicos move forward on plans giving reparations to African Americans
If California’s Democrats feel the need to pull this stunt right now, exactly how badly is Joe Biden actually doing in the super-secret internal polling?
A good portion of the California is on fire, many of its citizens have suffered from recent blackouts during extreme-heat conditions, and the draconian coronavirus lockdowns are killing small businesses.
Instead of worrying about real problems, the state’s political class has decided to focus on paying reparations to African Americans.
The state Senate supported creating the nine-member commission on a bipartisan 33-3 vote Saturday. The measure returns to the Assembly for a final vote before lawmakers adjourn for the year on Monday, though Assembly members overwhelmingly already approved an earlier version of the bill.
“Let’s be clear: Chattel slavery, both in California and across our nation, birthed a legacy of racial harm and inequity that continues to impact the conditions of Black life in California,” said Democratic Sen. Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles.
The proposal, AB-3121, titled “Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans,” would create the nine-member commission to study who would be getting the monies, and where it would be coming from. Considering that California was a free state during the Civil War and that businesses are collapsing throughout the state those answers are not obvious.
The matter will move to the Assembly, where its easy passage on the social justice merits alone will be easy.
States like Texas, New York and Vermont have done similar studies in the last two years, finding that along with cash, reparations could mean housing assistance, lower tuition, forgiving student loans, job training, community investments, etc.
“If the 40-acres-and-a-mule that was promised to free slaves were delivered to the descendants of those slaves today, we would all be billionaires,” state Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, said. “I hear far too many people say, ‘Well, I didn’t own slaves, that was so long ago.’ Well, you inherit wealth — you can inherit the debt that you owe to African-Americans.”
Why the sudden move in reparations? I suggest that it may be related to the fact that black support for President Donald Trump has jumped significantly, as note recently by Emerson College Polling:
Biden leads with all minority groups, albeit by different ranges. Biden leads with Asians 76% to 11%, Blacks/African Americans 77% to 19%, and Hispanic voters break for Biden 60% to 37%.
Compare the number to the 8% Trump received in 2016, and it is clear why Democrats are panicked. Furthermore, many Democrats are uninspired to vote, so clearly the party is looking to gain some traction with issues that they assume will appeal to their base.
Sadly for them, their base seems to be more attracted to the prosperity and freedoms showcased last week during the Republican National Convention.
As a matter of fact, if California’s Democrats feel the need to pull this stunt right now, exactly how badly is Joe Biden actually doing in the super-secret internal polling?
Of course, many Californians will chose to leave than pay for sins neither they or their ancestors engaged in. Our politicians have a plan for that as well.
Knowing about the huge outbound migration from California, Cavuto asked what would happen to wealthy people who move out of state.[California Assemblyman Rob] Bonta said tax “avoidance” would not be allowed as California would tax them for the next ten years, despite what state they live in. Bonta said that because they accrued the wealth in California, the state can continue to legally tax it.
“Tax avoidance,” with the primary purpose of reducing the valuation of a taxpayer’s worldwide net worth is required to be disregarded. “The bill authorizes the Franchise Tax Board to adopt regulations necessary to carry out these new statutory provisions including the valuation of certain assets that are not publicly traded,” Micheli said.
“AB 3088 requires the FTB to adopt regulation designed to prevent the avoidance or evasion of the wealth tax.”
Conversely, a billionaire who moves to California but acquired their wealth in another state, will still have to pay the proposed wealth tax for ten years.
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[California Assemblyman Rob] Bonta said tax “avoidance” would not be allowed as California would tax them for the next ten years, despite what state they live in. Bonta said that because they accrued the wealth in California, the state can continue to legally tax it.
California will make NY and NJ look like pickers
Good luck trying to enforce that law I guess…unless of course they are planning on kidnapping Americans from States all over the country to drag em back to California to find them guilty (again) of tax evasion???
I’d love to see them try to enforce their new law against anyone who moves to Texas, especially after Texas Courts hear their claim and say LOLGFY.
Yeah, and have the court assess all costs and the defendant/citizens Texas Size legal fees against California.
They will probably go after the pensioners who leave CA after they retire. That has long been a big drain on revenues. CA is just too expensive to retire in.
You are more than accurate. The Franchise Tax Board followed a former resident to Nevada and aggressively tried to tax him as though he was still a CA state resident. He fought and won. But, the cost to him was higher than the taxes they allege he owed.
I am grateful that I have been out of CA for more than twenty years now.
I am current with all of the taxes I owe on income earned in CA. They won’t be able to tax my 401(k) RMDs which leaves SSI and income I will be earning in AZ after I move my business there and relocate. So it’s really the pensioners who are the biggest target.
And Trump’s recent EOs bypassing Congress require states to kick in the difference if they want the supplemental unemployment benefit to remain at $600. Our Warden Newsom made it clear that CA cannot afford the $750 million/week otab. Sp CA bankruptcy is already virtually assured. There is no way the smaller states, red or blue, would allow Congress to bail out the wastrel biggest states. Trump completely outmaneuvered Pelosi/McConnell with those EOs.
This is a “wealth” tax, not an income tax. And they haven’t defined what “wealth” is. Goodbye 401k.
Phil- CA already tried to go after pensions that retirees “earned” in CA and lost…about 20 years ago. On my street in AZ there have been 4 new homes built and all bought by CA retirees getting out of the craziness. Happily I left CA three years ago:)
Next, California will be laying claim to assets of anyone stupid enough to set foot in California. I read about California’s Tax Franchise Board tangling with Gil Hyatt, and that that ended in a unanimous SCOTUS decision against the Board.
Is there any doubt that this case will end up there?
IIRC, the proposal is for a 0.4% wealth tax on assets over $30 million (that is, the first $30 million is exempt).
Yeah right, that’s to make it look palatable right now. We all know that sooner or later the $30 million deductible will drop to zero and the 0.4% will rise to 1.0% or more. Mission creep, anyone?
Meanwhile, in DC, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon proposed taxing capital gains annually–whether or not those gains were realized. So in other words you would have to appraise your portfolio (stocks, bonds, real estate, collectibles, etc.) every year to measure the gain, and if you didn’t have enough cash to cover the tax bite, well that’s tough shit.
CA was never a slave state. Nobody ever owned slaves in CA. Nobody was ever a slave in CA. There is no one alive today anywhere who ever owned nor was ever a slave in CA nor in the entire US. So CA will destroy the lives of the innocent to “reward” people who were never victimized?
Besides, where is CA going to get the money? Even if I were black and got this windfall, why would I want to stay here after the state goes bankrupt? Life is going to be very grim and dismal.
BTW, black slaves didn’t free themselves. Over 600,000 white Americans died fighting the war that liberated them. There’s your reparations. But don’t expect to get credit for that.
Besides, we’re talking about take money from people alive today, the vast majority of whom have no slave-owning ancestry, for something that was done by people long dead, to people alive today, most of whom are mixed race and many have no slave ancestry. Only the most corrupt legal system could find the language to convict innocent for a crime almost none of them have any linkage to at all.
The cost of the Civil War and the “lost” wealth of families denied 600,000 bread winners and future family generations should be considered against any reparations. Add the extra money spent specifically for Blacks… affirmative action..etc..when all tallied…more than covers the tab.
Add to that all welfare, all affirmative benefits and all the cost of prosecuting and imprisoning black criminals. When all of these are tallied, current blacks will be indentured for a long time.
They should be suing Planned Parenthood which has murdered nearly 40 million black babies. THAT can be proven in court.
CA did have slavery, but you mostly have to go back to pre-statehood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_California
Indigenous peoples were enslaved or made into indentured servants on a wholesale basis under Spanish and Mexican rule.
Even into the first few years of statehood, indigenous peoples were indentured in the thousands.
A few US slave owners also brought their slaves into pre-state and early statehood CA, but their rights to hold slaves were murky and later non-existent. CA was a non-slave state, but it did have a fugitive slave act requiring the return of slaves from 1852 – 1855.
See the Wikipedia article for more.
But if CA owes reparations for anyone here, it’s for local CA tribes forced into indentured servitude, not black slaves.
How can they actually collect the taxes if people move out of California?
For starters, probably tax the state employee pension payouts.
One way to reduce pensions.
But to counteract the exodus, California is about to become a sanctuary state for child rapists.
The pensioners are already facing almost certain cuts due to lack of funds. Now this. Don’t retirees vote?
State employees are union, and I am fairly sure most of them do as their
political officersshop stewards tell them to vote. They got what they voted for.There is a federal law, passed in 1996, preventing California (and every other state) from assessing taxes on pensions earned in California, once the recipient moves out of the state.
This law applies to every state, so that a state cannot tax pensions earned by one of its residents, once that resident moves out of the state.
You can still be taxed, of course, by the state where you move. Retirees would be well advised to move to a state without income taxes.
I’ll bet CA Dems are furiously seeking loopholes in said law, such as ‘reducing’ or ‘adjusting’ pension payouts for people out of state, which of course they will claim is not a tax, but a perfectly reasonable way to ensure real CA residents are not shortchanged by those nasty evil people who flee the benevolent arms of the State.
Hey, they can’t drag them back in chains, so this is the next best thing.
Just in, California will now use the Jolly Roger as the state flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolly_Roger#/media/File:Jolly-roger.svg
But aren’t pirates nice people who are just misunderstood?
With a disability (speech impediment) too!
Taxation without representation? Where have we heard that before?
Still present in Maine where they tax the hell out of vacation properties owned by out of staters.
How are you going to square Affirmative Action and quotas for all teh people you SCREEWED over the decades?
California is well populated with first and second generation Latinos and Asians who had absolutely no ties to slavery. There are plenty who fled countries like Viet Nam for a new life who had no ties to Euros who may have had ties to the Africa market.
There were many people imported from China to work on projects like railroad construction. The were paid less than whites and were treated worse and faced discrimination. I don’t hear anything about reparations for that group.
Because that group has the drive and intelligence to get on with their lives and make something of themselves.
Get ready for the greatest mass exodus in human history if this passes, both people moving in and moving out.
I have absolutely no problem paying reparations to any slave that I’ve ever held in my life, and I’m pretty sure everybody else in the US would agree.
Now when people who have never owned a slave or ever had any living relative in their family own a slave are expected to pay people who have never been slaves or never had any living person in their family been a slave, it breaks down rapidly. I mean I’m fairly certain some of my great-great relatives back in the Old Country were held as slaves back in the 12th and 15th century, but I doubt Putin is going to write me a check.
My grandparents and great grandparents immigrated in the late 1800’s or early 20th century. They had no opportunity to own slaves, since slavery didn’t exist then.
They barely owned anything, as a matter of fact.
That’s probably the main reason they left Ireland.
I have had an Italian friend who immigrated here. We have been friends now for 53 years. He and his wife came here with very little. They built a bakery business, which has been killed by China’s viral treachery.
Aldo is a very sharp cookie, he was most certainly smart enough to get a degree, but like most new immigrants, he was busy raising a large family which completely assimilated.
My own ancestors were some of the Quakers who originally settled Germantown, PA at the end of the 17th Century. They were members of the Meeting (what Quakers call a congregation) that produced the first recorded protest against slavery in 1688. The family remained Quakers until long after the War Between the States and never owned any slaves. In fact, although I don’t have any record of their personal involvement, they lived in parts of NY where Quakers were part of the Underground Railroad. It simply isn’t true that everyone who settled here in colonial times was a slaveowner, let alone opposed to abolition.
But anyway, I reject the idea that the descendants should be held responsible for the sins of their ancestors. I have enough sins of my own to account for, thank you very much.
Alexander II liberated the serfs in 1861
Sounds like a Bill of Attainder to me.
“f California’s Democrats feel the need to pull this stunt right now, exactly how badly is Joe Biden actually doing in the super-secret internal polling?”
The real question is how badly are Democrats polling in CA? We are assumed to be an automatic Biden vote so why would the CA pols pull such a stunt?
I know that Newsom was shaken by the 2016 polls that revealed 35% of Trump rally attendees were Democrats, a number that reportedly grew to over 50% in 2019-20. But it would have to be more than that. Maybe Trump’s black support is exploding out here? I am very sure they are among Hispanics. Wouldn’t that be sweet were Trump to win CA?
I like to allow all my electoral fantasies flexibility but restraint is also a virtue
Ah! Would that your statement were so Pasadena Phil! Sadly, California is sending every registered voter a mail-in ballot. Yesterday I received my Santa Clara County Voter’s Choice brochure and on 4 of the 6 sides of the tri-fold brochure I am encouraged to vote by mail (“Vote Safe, Vote From Home!”) This state in doing everything they can to make sure Biden wins, no matter how people actually vote.
They are sending mail-in ballots to everyone but it is not mandatory to mail in your ballots. I plan to vote in person so that my vote gets recorded on voting day and cannot be “harvested” nor “lost”).
If Trump voters really want to secure the coming landslide victory from the inevitable weeks/months delay to count mail in ballots, all Trump voters who can should insist on voting in person. Then should the Dems reverse the landslide victory via the mail-in shenanigans Hillary promised last week, the corruption will be too glaringly obvious to stick.
I believe Trump will sweep in a landslide and the Dems will abandon the vote-rigging plans when they realize it’s useless and may likely cost them the 2024 election. We’ll know who won by the end of the night on voting day. Or you can sue me.
I’m sure the political class would write any type of tax law so that any amount would not be taken from their salary or wealth plus the well connected lobby group of the moment.
Perhaps it’s nothing to do with Biden.
Perhaps California state legislators are seeking reelection from an electorate fed up with Covid, lockdowns, riots, fires and blackouts while law enforcement swings randomly from emptying the jails and tolerating riots to chasing down paddleboarders and closing churches.
Perhaps they’re desperate to change the story.
My father came to America in 1926 from Ireland, my mother in 1939.
IF I were forced to pay reparations, I would then be bringing a suit against the UK government demanding reparations for the 700 or so years my ancestral homeland suffered under the thumb of the Brits.
Bottom line is, no matter where your family is from, no matter your race or ethnicity, you can probably find someone who screwed over your people in the past.
Let the legal fun begin!
I see your point as made, but you’d be better off suing the US govt for the confiscation of your wealth illegally excused as reparations that your family line is not responsible for. Being newer law, you’d have a better case than trying to tilt at the UK govt to sue laws that don’t exist into existence.
So here some random thoughts:
1. The internal conflict within the d party between the tribal groups that they have assembled can’t be wished away. CA is the example, many black d were loyal soldiers patiently waiting their.turn for public office or to receive patronage payouts. The demographic shift in numbers of Hispanics and to a lesser extent Asian has caused a reshuffle of the political spoils.
2. Public sector pensions being tax advantaged in state v out of state isn’t overly controversial IMO. Part of the sales pitch to voters in generating approval for support of the pensions direct and indirect was that retirees are a net gain to the state because they are ‘non polluting ‘ and no additional infrastructure cost while the pension is spent supporting local jobs and local/state tax base. Legal issues to overcome but it could be done.
3. Reparations is a very tough row to hoe. Who receives? Who pays? Example, would SEN Harris be eligible, if not why not? Are they proposing a ‘one drop rule’ borrowed from Jim Crow d?
Will it only apply to those born in CA? If not then plenty of folks eligible to receive ‘reparations ‘ will have a reason to move to CA. Lots of 2nd, 3rd and 4th order effects and unintended consequences at play.
4. Timimg. IMO this is a brazen attempt to pander and get out the vote. The problem is this ignores the history of issues in CA with Spanish Missions enslaving local tribes and the Chinese workers being exploited then the imposition of the exclusion acts preventing their families from immigrating.
This isn’t a simple black v white issue, pun intended.
Payment of reparations has to be constitutional under the California constitution.
the basic scheme is that whites, latino’s asians will be taxed with the money transferred to blacks as reparations.
While I am not an expert of california tax law, Under the Federal constitution, 13A prevents the taxation of income or wealth based on anything other than income. 14A prevents discrimantory taxation based on race.
Under califoria law, citizen propositions can be voted and incorporated into the state constitution (prop 13 property tax). Whites and latino’s still make up the majority of the CA population. Does anyone think a proposition banning reparations will fail?
As noted above, 14A of the federal constitution should prohibit any preferential payout. It will be hard for the the 9ca to say 14A is not incorporated against the states, Certainly SCOTUS would not hold so – well maybe if biden gets to pick replacements for thomas
California, and – sadly – a lot of the rest of the country, had enough guilt-ridden whites that a ban on reparations vote is far from a sure thing.
Payment of reparations has to be constitutional under the California constitution.
the basic scheme is that whites, latino’s asians will be taxed with the money transferred to blacks as reparations.
While I am not an expert of california tax law, Under the Federal constitution, 16A prevents the taxation of income or wealth based on anything other than income. 14A prevents discrimantory taxation based on race.
Under califoria law, citizen propositions can be voted and incorporated into the state constitution (prop 13 property tax). Whites and latino’s still make up the majority of the CA population. Does anyone think a proposition banning reparations will fail?
As noted above, 14A of the federal constitution should prohibit any preferential payout. It will be hard for the the 9ca to say 14A is not incorporated against the states, Certainly SCOTUS would not hold so – well maybe if biden gets to pick replacements for thomas
They’ll certainly try once again to create a fraudulent “national” popular vote narrative this November if they possibly can, and California is the place to do it.
I figure by about 2032 the Democrats will be trying again to break California up into politically similar smaller states, like their last proposal, in hopes of getting some extra EVs out of the next election — because they’ll never convince 37 other states to help abolish the Electoral College, and the first time a Republican ticket gets a “national” popular majority, the NPVIC is toast.
Who is Black? Does one self identify? Are not some Black Trump supporters said to NOT be Black? Is the test political?
This seems to be condescending to Blacks. It seems like the “Slave Owner” is giving something to his lowly slaves. This is not “equality” but labeling Blacks as losers based on the color of their skin. This seems like blatant racism to me. How can any self-respecting Black accept this open attempt to purchase his/her vote for a Democrat? I find this appalling on many levels. Am I missing something?
So what? Let them form a committee to study and propose reparation pipe-dreams.
It will come to nothing. How often have the Democrats pulled an election year bait and switch on the blacks?
Have Dems ever actually done anything for blacks, except to jail and impoverish them even more?
“If the 40-acres-and-a-mule that was promised to free slaves were delivered to the descendants of those slaves today, we would all be billionaires.”
If the value of “40-acres-and-a-mule” at the time of its promise were calculated, and then divided among today’s African American population, I doubt very much that they would all “be billionaires.” Plenty of white folk had more than “40-acres-and-a-mule” back then, and their descendants didn’t see any part of that wealth.
“I hear far too many people say, ‘Well, I didn’t own slaves, that was so long ago.’ Well, you inherit wealth — you can inherit the debt that you owe to African-Americans.”
While it’s true you can inherit debt, debt presumes a contractual relationship between parties in which one party has made a promise to pay. But we’re not talking about a debt, we’re talking about a tort. The relationship between owner and slave was not contractual and slaves did not enter into the relationship voluntarily (slavery is INVOLUNTARY servitude). Without an enforceable contract, there are no obligations, and with no obligations (on either side) there can be no debt. Liability for a tort requires a finding from a civil court. That liability has never been found, and if it had been, it likewise cannot devolve upon the descendants of the person(s) found liable. That’s not how civil process works.
If the argument is that the government was responsible – no, it was not. Slavery wasn’t made illegal by the federal government because it was considered a state matter (and quite properly so). It was made illegal in many states. It was not illegal in others. But the states didn’t ship, sell, or buy slaves – private persons did. The states are not responsible for the actions of private persons even when those actions may be tortious (whether the acts are criminalized by the state or not). States also cannot be held liable for criminal acts because those acts have not yet been defined as crimes, but acts that do any injury are always within the jurisdiction of civil courts (i.e. they need not be criminalized to be actionable).
Slavery was a tort perpetrated by the slave owners, now all long dead. Liability for their tortious acts does not devolve upon their descendants (never mind people who are merely of the same race) nor upon the states that didn’t criminalize their actions.
Does anyone have any comments on this? I’d like to know what you think of the argument presented here.
US Constitution 14th amendment Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Not sure how any form of reparations can survive 14A
“Reparations” will consist of study committees, reparations directors, reparation coordinators, reparations outreach coordinators, reparations legislative consensus committee coordinators, and all the legal and paralegal support required. Oh yes, I forgot the pensions for everybody. All in all, doesn’t leave much for the “victims” so we better form a committee to study why rich people aren’t contributing enough.
Exactly
This is about creating Phoney Baloney positions for the connected ones to milk the taxpayers and pad their own pockets
Reverend Al and Ben Crump are probably already jockeying to chair the board of directors for that operation.
Simple… have the families split up the value of a mule and 40 acres owed their forebearer. If 100 people are the progeny then the mule and 40 Acres is divided up as a 1 percent per person. The mule and acreage was made by a general. Better yet….ok….give them the mules and land in the newly acquired Greenland. Liberia probably doesn’t want them.
They could make of Greenland a paradise, if and when the glaciers there finally collapse due to “climate change.” That shouldn’t be too long from now, seeing the Arctic has been ice-free since 2014.
No biggie, the cost of housing in CA has already driven most blacks out of the state.
The messsage is clear: If you’d like reparations to come to your own state, try beatings, looting, arson, and even murder.
My family came to the states fifty years after scum like Obama were forced to give up their slaves. I’m no more guilty than Chinese Americans
There are 29 Dems and 11 Reps in the CA state senate. Assuming all the Dems voted for this obscenity, that means four Republicans joined them. One wonders what the point of voting GOP is.
Slavery was not legal in the California under Mexican law when it became a territory of the United States in 1848, and slavery was never legal in the territory afterward. In 1849, a black man who had been brought to the territory as a slave won a court case that resulted in his freedom and the legal precedent of the official non-acknowledgement of slavery in California. It entered the Union as a free state in 1850.
California was a part of Mexico before 1848, and Mexico outlawed slavery in 1829. Prior to 1829 (under both Spanish and Mexican rule), the indigenous people of California were treated as de facto slaves by the Hispanic settlers.
So the history of California is such that if any reparations for slavery are owed, they are owed to the members of the various Indian tribes of California—and they are owed by the Hispanics in the state. It’s probably a safe bet that essentially none of the legislators who voted for the bill are aware of their state’s actually history of slavery.
Does that mean that if you’re jewish, you can sue the Egyptian government?
Even better: The German Government. Reparations plus damages.
The Germans have already paid reparations.
And the Egyptian matter is res judicata. It was litigated before Alexander the Great.
If they do this, NO federal funds of any sort to Commiefornia, for any reason.
Actually you can’t inherit debt. A decedent’s estate continues to owe his debts, and that debt can eat up the whole estate so the heirs get nothing. But any debt beyond the value of the estate disappears with the debtor’s death.
The only kind of reparations for slavery that I can support is allowing the heirs of a specific slave to sue the heirs of that slave’s owner, with liability strictly limited to identifiable property that belonged to the slave-owner and is still in their possession. If they don’t have anything that was his, then they’re not liable for his debts.
Actually I wouldn’t support even that, because slavery was legal at the time, so the owner had no reason not to own the slave and thus did not owe him anything. But if the proposal were limited as I described above I could at least agree to disagree civilly. Anything beyond that is simply not acceptable.
Tousiant Haywood: Could a slave own property? On first thought, one might say obviously not; an enslaved person was considered property himself and could no more own something than a cow could own a horse.
In what states could a slave own property? I’m not sure they could even own personal property, much less own real property.
I don’t know whether slaves in the USA could own property, but there certainly have been legal systems in which they could, e.g. pretty much everywhere in classical times. Rome, Greece, etc. Many slaves were wealthy and owned slaves of their own.
But I don’t see how this is relevant. What difference does it make whether a slave owned anything before emancipation? The point is that a slave has heirs, who inherit anything he is entitled to. If money falls due to a deceased person, it automatically goes to his heirs. So if we can identify a specific slave, and determine that a specific item that belonged to his owner is now owed to him as compensation, then it goes to his heirs.
I misplaced my response, please see below.
How much will Boers, Rhodesians and other African-Americans receive? Or is it restricted to black folk like Rachel Dolezal, Oprah and Obama?
I’ve been told that pro-Trump folks have been gathering every Saturday at about 3 p.m. in Beverly Hills along “big” Santa Monica Boulevard at about Cañon Drive. I put “big” in front of Santa Monica Boulevard because in that area there is the commercial street “little” Santa Monica Boulevard and a “through” street parallel and north of little Santa Monica. There is a lovely local park adjacent to and north of big Santa Monica, and sometimes the street is closed off for the pro-Trump folks. I was there last Saturday for a shot time. Every one there was all SMILES. A very, very happy group. I just purchased an American flag and a Trump flag, both 3′ x 5′, and plan to be there this Saturday.
I don’t understand how, within the rule of law, descendants can inherit from their ancestors property that the ancestors did not legally own.
Such a transfer of property could only be effected by a government willing to use some form of coercion to force the legal owners of that property into a position they’d not voluntarily assume, and that coercion would place the forcing entity, the government itself, supposedly the prime upholders of the rule of law, outside the rule of law.
It seems that the government in this case would be employing extralegal means to benefit some citizens at the expense of others. Such a policy may be “legal” if the necessary machinery is put in place by the legislators, bet it certainly does omits the idea that good laws must conform to general rules which aren’t supposed favor one set of citizens over another set.