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California’s Reparations Panel Now Calling for Prisons to be Closed and Privileges Restored

California’s Reparations Panel Now Calling for Prisons to be Closed and Privileges Restored

It’s Never Enough: Chair of California reparations panel pushes for wealth, mansion, or property tax to pay the massive tab for racial justice activism.

I will have to say I am truly grateful that California’s politicians voted for a Reparations Panel.

The organization is proving critics who insist there is no appeasing racial justice activists right in every move. In fact, I would suggest that its theme song be The Cure’s “Never Enough.”

Granted, the band may be too white for the group, but the reparations panel hasn’t hesitated to step up its grasping demands for more, more, and more money. First, the panel demanded over $200K for each black in California. Then, it was a cool $1 million. Next, it insisted that $5 million was fair.

All this was in a state that never had legalized slavery.

Now California’s controversial reparations panel is upping the ante yet again. It wants the state’s legislature to close ten prisons…and that current inmates also receive fair wages and are eligible to vote.

At their meeting in San Diego this weekend, where expert members of the public testified about various issues including prison reform, the panel preliminary approved recommending that ten prisons be shuddered while debating what should be done with the sites.

California state prisons house some of the most notorious prisoners in the country, including serial killers and lifelong gang members.

The savings made from closing the prisons will be used to fund the work of the new government agency being set up to dispense the reparations, the California American Freedman Affairs Agency.

The group has recommended more cushy treatment for current inmates, that includes eliminating certain types of punishment and paying them more money for work done while incarcerated.

Additionally, based on the testimony of “experts,” the chair of California’s reparations panel is pressing for a wealth, mansion, or property tax to pay billions of dollars to descendants of slaves.

Kamilah Moore tweeted over the weekend that the panel is considering proposing a state estate tax, a mansion tax or a graduated-property tax in its final recommendations to the state legislature, which are due this summer.

The panel heard from tax law experts that white people are more likely to be wealthy, so proposals to redistribute wealth would directly benefit the black population.

…Among the suggestions brought up at the California reparations task force meeting on Friday were proposals to tax the rich, such as through a state estate tax or a mansion tax; incentivizing wealthy people to help fund reparations by providing tax breaks; or helping all taxpayers below the median wealth line by means of a tax credit, MarketWatch reports.

Their suggestions were all based on the notion that current United States tax code favors the wealthy — who they say are more likely to be white.

‘Our tax laws as written have a disparate impact,’ Dorothy Brown, a tax professor at Georgetown Law and author of the book The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans & How We Can Fix It testified.

Some brave souls pointed out the flaws in Moore’s thinking.

Will Black Lives Matter have to pay the mansion tax?

Then, there are pesky constitutional issues that would have to be addressed.

I will conclude with The Cure’s “Never Enough” video, startling in its prophetic take on what San Francisco would morph into.

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Comments

UnCivilServant | February 1, 2023 at 7:10 am

It’s clear that the only way to fix this is to fire the reparations panel, charge them twice whatever their panel’s expenses amounted to for wasting everyone’s time and throw anyone who voted for this nonsense out of office, physically if need be.

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to UnCivilServant. | February 1, 2023 at 7:38 am

    And, bill thrm for the resulting damage from the riots the troublemakers will gin up.

    Naw, what’s need is more study.
    I suggest we put the panel members into the various prisons for a full year to intimately study the problem 24/7. I’m sure a years worth of interviewing the prisoners in intimate settings of the cells will be eye opening for them.
    Pretty sure the study results will be fulfilling for most of us.

I could get behind paying prisoners more for the work they do in prison. The prison-industrial complex is an abomination. It provides incentive for locking up educated, productive individuals who can produce high-value work in prison, while releasing useless thugs. It perverts the whole point of prison and is legal slavery. Permitted by the constitution, but I don’t want it.

Other than that, their proposals are all garbage.

The lower the average IQ, the more you have to pay them. They thought it through and raised the amount.

We owe them nothing.

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to artichoke. | February 1, 2023 at 7:40 am

    When are the Whites,Asians, and Brown folks going to find their voice and shout the Blacks down?

    Blocks only get away with the stuff because they’re not cold out for it. What are others afraid of?

      Not blacks, not color blocs (e.g. “people of color”). We should be wary to exercise liberal license to indulge diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) lest we join the not so novel modern family to effect social progress.

      Of all groups having been disadvantaged in the years of California statehood…. Chinese and later Japanese are the ones.

        The Gentle Grizzly in reply to alaskabob. | February 1, 2023 at 6:28 pm

        Two observations:

        1. The Chinese were treated like dirt and yet still ended up owning great swaths of real estate and successful businesses.

        2. The Japanese were interned and lost virtually everything. Yet, at the close of the war, picked up the pieces and went on with their lives.

        Hey, Blacks? After set-asides, race Borneo test scores, affirmative action and handouts, what’s your excuse?

        henrybowman in reply to alaskabob. | February 1, 2023 at 10:45 pm

        And yet they are often still the MOST grateful to be Americans.
        Entitlement breeds resentment — a fact that LBJ just couldn’t comprehend.

Clown show

Surely for “Prisons” to be closed, in the headline?

Hell, give them the money and sudden wealth will allow them to eliminate themselves. What ever a person is personality wise, sudden wealth will make that person go into overdrive.

If one took a God’s eye view of California, who would be most deserving of special consideration?
I say it’s the browns who work the fields and deliver our fruits and vegetables and live in squalor that few of us could imagine.
But I saw an interesting stat, that compared infant mortality among the literally dirt poor browns with the infant mortality of children raised by single mother blacks.
The browns’ number was hardly different from us honkies and crackers.
But the blacks’ number was horrendous.
Not poverty, is it?
The browns have intact families, and the blacks choose not to.
And it’s California blacks who deserve “reparations”?

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to FrankJNatoli. | February 1, 2023 at 9:42 am

    The browns also have a work ethic, and while they may not be aiming for being the next Feynman or Crick, they DO aim for an intact family, and maybe even a little storefront business like appliance repair, or auto body shop, or a little restaurant or food truck,

    Note: so many make disparaging remarks about the day laborers at Lowe’s or in the parking lot at 7/11. All are the brown folks. Not a black among them.

My ancestor fought in the Civil War for the Union, which freed the slaves. By all rights, the blacks should pay me.

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to Othniel. | February 1, 2023 at 9:45 am

    I am aware of at least three occasions in the private sector of losing out to a less-qualified black, and was denied a weight waiver for promotion when a GROSSLY FAT black got the waiver when in the Navy.

    Pardon my street language, but, when it comes to reparations: fuck ’em. Kick their asses out of the nest. No quotas. No set-asides. Make it or sink. Just like the big bad honkey.

Sounds like it’s all about the benjamins.

Good and hard, California. You idiots voted (and continue to vote) for these people.

    Roger that, V42. The Calif voters should enjoy the woke fruits of their elective choices.

      The Gentle Grizzly in reply to Q. | February 1, 2023 at 6:37 pm

      I’m sure the foresters in the Siskiyous, the ranchers in the Mammoth Lakes district, and the farmers in Imperial County love what the five Bay Area counties, L. A. County, and Sacramento County gave the entire rest of the state.

Steven Brizel | February 1, 2023 at 9:06 am

Let them all pound rocks and salt-The next step from this clearly misguided commission will be a reccomendation that the entire criminal code be repealed since most violent offenders who commit violent crime against other inner city residents are also Afrrican Americans.

    Roy in Nipomo in reply to Steven Brizel. | February 1, 2023 at 3:41 pm

    If they repeal the entire criminal code they would have no club to use to beat people who defend themselves from (what is now) crime. What they really want is buckets of “Get Out of Jail Free” cards issued to their favored group/s, but whites to still be punished, including for self-defense (and they will add “hate think” if they can).

E Howard Hunt | February 1, 2023 at 9:07 am

Today’s conservatives are just tardy liberals. Once they signed on to the notion of equality, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they painted themselves into a corner. Crime, unequal results, decreased productivity and civil unrest will continue apace because these problems will only admit of one cause (all others being censored) – racial hatred based only on outward appearance.

As MTV used to tell us back in the day: Too much is never enough.

our country has been paying “reparations” in one form or another since 1964–no, thanks–someone needs to tell this “california” commission that their fifteen minutes is up

Dolce Far Niente | February 1, 2023 at 10:26 am

If it is true that whites are inordinately wealthy (and who also pay the vast majority of the taxes which fund the gimmeecrat state), it is also true that blacks, by occupying the bottom rungs of the economic scale pay little or no taxes, which to my mind is a pretty decent form of reparations right there.

I don’t mind if California burns itself to the ground, but those po’ black inmates they want to release aren’t bound to stay if Cali, but will migrate.

After receiving $5,000,000 they are by definition wealthy, and can be taxed accordingly.

The legal aspects of reparations have already been tested, and determined to be ahhhhhhhh ummmmmm lacking. Somehow, the fact that CA was never a slave state, that just makes it more absurd. Anyone that seriously proposes anything like it.. they just beclown themselves. Which, I suppose, is only fitting in clown world.

This panel is upping the ante on the amount of disappointment when these plans don’t pay out. Deliberately building up expectations for an agenda of items that are not possible seems like a bad idea. Especially when grafted onto the often violent and destructive tribalism prevalent in some sectors of our society. When this comes crashing down CA will not be the ideal place to reside.

OwenKellogg-Engineer | February 1, 2023 at 12:02 pm

In case anyone needs to be reminded of the looters, moochers, and destroyers in our society, then re-read Francisco D’Anconia’s Money Speech:

https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/

Just when I think the California reparations panel has finally gone full around-the-bend-crazy, it confidently turns to me as says, “Hold my malt liquor.”

P.S. These reparations dummkopfs really should show some more humility given that CA blacks are outnumbered by all other racial groups, 16-1 (7-1 by Hispanics alone). So what’s to keep California Whites, Hispanics, and Asians from making common cause, going Full Goodfellas, and just whacking the “problem people” so they can keep their hard-earned dollars? Ethnic and racial wars have kicked into full gear over a lot less than what the reparations idiots are demanding.

Inquiring minds want to know.

    Eric R. in reply to MarkJ. | February 1, 2023 at 5:48 pm

    Hispanics won’t hesitate to do so if pushed hard enough. They can’t be considered racist, per modern Marxist thought.

      The Gentle Grizzly in reply to Eric R.. | February 1, 2023 at 6:43 pm

      They have already ethnically cleansed areas like Inglewood and the surrounding neighborhoods. They moved in and chased the blacks, Ed, Blacks out to the desert.

    JimWoo in reply to MarkJ. | February 1, 2023 at 10:41 pm

    Kinda Rwanda on the Pacific.

See that box over there? The one that says “Reparations” on the label? Guess what it says underneath the label?

Pandora’s Box.

Guess what happens when you open it.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair | February 1, 2023 at 2:05 pm

All this was in a state that never had legalized slavery.

Even if it had, so what??

The luckiest blacks in the history of the planet are those whose ancestors were enslaved in Africa (by Africans) and brought here, so that their descendants could be Americans. Billions of people around the world risk their lives trying to get to America (which goes to prove the complete BS about the left’s continuing “raaaccistssty!!” claims) and, up until only very recently, the most valuable thing any human could have was American citizenship. Blacks who are descendants of slaves should be paying us. No joke. Or would they prefer to have been born in Ivory Coast?

Further, slavery was part of the world. Like it or not. There are no reparations to be had for anyone for having been subject to something that has been “normal” for most of existence.

Lastly, no one is entitled to any sort of reparations for laws that were on the books. End of story.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair | February 1, 2023 at 2:12 pm

Groups that commit violent crimes at rates far above their percentage representation in society and make civil society almost unlivable should be very, very careful about trying to extort money from society, at large – especially with some sort of insane attitude of entitlement about something that ridiculous.

BierceAmbrose | February 1, 2023 at 3:18 pm

I think never is enough; never is enough (never gonna do that stuff.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHTQTNkIdmg
https://genius.com/Barenaked-ladies-never-is-enough-lyrics

California is my home state and I was born in the late 50s. My family was poor and got better through time. I am White and grew up in a SoCal city that was equal White, Mexican-American, and Asian-American with no racism.
When I graduated HS in the mid 70s I was shown the door and went to work for the phone company to pay for college and live. I worked in some of the worst areas of LA, The Mexican Slums and then the Black Slums. I was working on multiracial crews and found the Black Slums to be open warfare and Blacks to be racist. All of us were attacked in the Black Slums, including my boss who was Black was shot. The Black on Black crime was heavy. This claim of reparations is just a way to get money. The opening of prisons and stopping convictions of crime is causing the country to fail.

“ Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?” — Thomas Sowell

And look at all the idiotic masks that they’re all still wearing.

    henrybowman in reply to D38999. | February 1, 2023 at 11:02 pm

    I want to hear much, much more about the token white guy on that panel.
    Sorry/not sorry for assuming he’s a guy.

How long until these race-baiting nuts claim that reparations involve the right to kill white people in revenge?

Newsome would be OK with that.

He’d just round up Republicans for them to kill.

I wasn’t sure Cali could do anything more under Newsome to drive out residents but BOOM!!! When everyone who actually pays taxes leaves and takes all of Silicon Valley and what industry is left then who will pay for anything? If they levee a “wealth tax” and the poor downtrodden get their $5,000,000 then won’t that make them immediately the “wealthy” and they will have that confiscated?

Could they include a NDA that requires that they never speak of being a victim or being the defendant of a slave ever again ?

Why don’t they just re-buy Liberia and schedule free one-way flights?
Instead of making new stupid mistakes, they should stick with tried-and-true stupid mistakes.

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to henrybowman. | February 2, 2023 at 11:51 am

    No to either one. Liberia is already there for them.
    As for air fare, deduct it from the EBT, Section 8, WIC, and other programs that one last time, as they will no longer need them

Funny thing is California can do all these crazy things tomorrow if they want because there are no adults in the room to stop them.

William Downey | February 2, 2023 at 8:23 am

My crystal ball foresees a more significant number of the rich departing Cali.

I am reminded of the Law on Unintended Consequences and the fact that these social transfers will only exacerbate the conditions that necessitated said transfers.

Asinine.

Capitalist-Dad | February 2, 2023 at 9:19 am

Unsurprisingly, the leftist Democrats think just like the Commies they so admire. As we know from Solzhenitsyn criminals in the gulag were in charge while political prisons were the underlings, because the criminals were not enemies of the state. The filthy reparations board is doing Lenin and Stalin one better—just release the criminals and open up space for political prisoners.

    …and implement exit fees to tax those who try to flee to freedom. You can’t make these stuff up (well, they can, I guess, but no rational American who is secure in their gender identity can).

BiteYourTongue | February 2, 2023 at 12:26 pm

The only money CA should spend is for straight jackets. Those people are nuts.

Isn’t it about time for the San Andreas Fault to let go and dump all these lunatics in the Pacific?

I can’t see them being missed!