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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