California Reparations Taskforce Now Demanding Up to $800 Billion
The new estimate is more than 2.5 times California’s $300 billion annual budget.
When we first reported on the California Reparations Task Force, it demanded over $500 billion in compensation packages to be distributed to the state’s black residents.
That was in December. As we head into April, the amount has increased….substantially.
It could cost California more than $800 billion to compensate Black residents for generations of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination, economists have told a state panel considering reparations.
The preliminary estimate is more than 2.5 times California’s $300 billion annual budget, and does not include a recommended $1 million per older Black resident for health disparities that have shortened their average life span. Nor does the figure count compensating people for property unjustly taken by the government or devaluing Black businesses, two other harms the task force says the state perpetuated.
Black residents may not receive cash payments anytime soon, if ever, because the state may never adopt the calculations. The reparations task force met Wednesday to discuss the numbers and can vote to adopt the suggestions or come up with its own figures. The proposed calculations and figures come from a consulting team of five economists and policy experts.
“We’ve got to go in with an open mind and come up with some creative ways to deal with this,” said Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer. He’s one of two lawmakers on the task force responsible for mustering support from state legislators and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
How is this staggering amount calculated? Race activists demanded it.
Activists on Wednesday demanded that the state of California pay millions of dollars to each Black resident in reparations as a way to make amends for slavery and subsequent discrimination, dismissing the idea of payments of $5 million per person as “nothing” and “too little.”
…I believe that 5 million in reparations is too little for the work that foundational Black Americans have done for this country and as well for other countries,” one speaker said. “I believe that 7.6 million [dollars] is a number that can be used very wisely in our foundational Black American communities.”
Foundational Black Americans are descendants of Black people who were enslaved in the U.S. According to the speaker, reparations are overdue for all foundational Black Americans both for the suffering they endured and for helping “every culture get on their feet.” He also called for various other reparations measures, such as giving 40 acres and a tractor and colleges agreeing not raise tuition prices for foundational Black American families.
“To try to keep holding foundational Black Americans back from what is due for us is just another form of slavery,” he concluded. “It is preposterous and totally absurd.”
Consultants asked to task to ‘err on the side of generosity.’
In their report, the consultants suggest the state task force ‘err on the side of generosity’ and consider a down-payment with more money to come as more evidence becomes available.
‘It should be communicated to the public that the substantial initial down-payment is the beginning of a conversation about historical injustices, not the end of it,’ they said.
The new estimate is more than 2.5 times California’s $300 billion annual budget, and does not include a recommended $1 million per older Black resident for health disparities that have shortened their average life span.
The continued drive to pay people who were never slaves by those who never owned slaves provides a new set of incentives….to leave the state.
If California approves reparations, I don't see how I can continue to live in the state. It feel last-strawish.
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 27, 2023
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Comments
Give them what they want. Just make sure that none of the money comes from outside of commiefornia.
Agreed. It’ll be fun to watch migration patterns if this ever passed. How many whites will leave and how many blacks will move in to get the reparations? Mind you, these reparations are on top of plans to spend gobs of money on the chimera of total electrification. You got think these elected politicians are simply nuts, but then they reflect the voters who put them there.
And that’s just the down-payment. This will never end. Well.
And they never had slaves
Nuts
Can you imagine if you are a descendent of a Asian RR immigrant and you will be forced to pay higher taxes because of this decision?
How about a Native American that just moved to CA?
It’s going to be hilarious. EVERY Black person is expecting to be compensated. The anger of those who are denied. Especially those that don’t qualify, but are actual defendants of slaves!
U-Haul is going to be VERY 🚐 busy.
How about if you are a small business owner in California who has worked hard and sacrificed to make the business succeed – your hard work was for nothing.
Which is why business owners in California should be prepping to either move their business out of the state, shut it down completely, or just beat feet out of there when the organic waste impacts the rotating airfoil.
Subotai Bahadur
Wait.
You think they’ll let you leave?
With anything but the cloths on your back?
And a permanent California tax lien on your future earnings?
I would be willing to fund them a return home
To
Africa
The new Liberia
Reminds me of Flip Wilson’s “Back To Africa Movement Telethon” routine.
Opens with telephones slowly ringing with telethon stage. Then says the what BTAM stands for and the phones go crazy.
Anyone with brains is leaving that state
It brings to mind something Tucker Carlson has been saying about transgender activists: they think they are gods. This demand for ridiculous sums of money with absolutely no regard for where it’s going to come from smacks of the same attitude.
Why not? Many of them have been getting paychecks for nothing but drinking, screwing, and lawbreaking all their lives. Now they’re just haggling over a raise.
In a just world what California wants to give them they can without outside sources. But you know American taxpayers will be picking up the tab eventually.
Just start signing over California assets, but they will be turned into worthless land and buildings.
In a just world if anyone pays it should be the people who captured and sold them into slavery.
Here’s a map to get the ‘Reparations Task Force’ started.
No charge.
That would be other Africans.
As well as the people who held them in bondage, practically all of whom would be democrats.
Is this real? I have never heard of “Negroland” in my life.
The name is so trite, it reminds me of the “Meatland” comic.
Remember — there is no sacrifice too great for you to make for me
The sooner everyone tells these grifters to eff off the better. Even if they had built something foundational, which they did not, we’d still have to deduct for all the stuff they tore down in the riots, for all their crimes, for all the injuries and property damage and the cost of incarcerating such criminal antisocial commie debris. Looks like they owe us.
You forgot 5 Decades of welfare payments or was it six?
Just tell ’em to sod off.
It’s going to be hilarious when reality finally slaps these people upside their heads and they get nothing.
Newsome may have walked himself into a trap of his own making. He’s got to know there is no way they could pay anywhere close to what’s being demanded.
That includes all people… persons… and babies… fetal-babies who were victims of slavery, DIEversity, and planned populationhood.
Keep going higher. Raise expectations even higher. When nothing comes of it blame it all on Democrats since they run the state. We can all watch the consequences. .
Mostly peaceful reparation collections. I’ve seen this film somewhere before.
I know this is just a push to give an inch, take a mile, and hope to settle for a yard. However, let’s play along for a second with the understanding that such grifters can go straight to hell in real life.
Even if something as absurd as reparations were to become feasible, then the calculation would need to be based on a wealth adjustment of the difference between the average Caucasian and the average African American in the US. However, it would only be for verified slaves and their descendants. It would also be a one-time disbursement…no repeated grift when all of this new-found wealth was spent.
“It would also be a one-time disbursement”
Never, ever play that game with Democrats.
They always get what they want first, then they don’t deliver their end.
Ask Ronald Reagan about “one time amnesties.”
If this were to be actually enacted, I would guess that the black population of California would “inexplicably” explode, and cities like Houston, N.O., Chicago et al would suddenly find themselves empty.
Would be interesting to see the crime rates at that point.
Frack The Fault, baby.
This “reparations” agitprop is such a farcical exercise and a waste of time and resources; something that the vile Dumb-o-crat apparatchiks do exceedingly well.
Such a scheme will never pass Constitutional muster, even if implemented, and, will be swiftly challenged and struck down.
Among the many predictable events that will inevitably trigger the slightly-peaceful riots.
It might be unrealistic to expect the carnage to be limited to California, since this “plan” will most-certainly have to include federal funny-money dollars, and the rest of us out here will insist “No effin’ way!”.
They’re working to establish blacks as the most worthless race in the world.
My guess is that everyone knows that this is such a blatant violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amdt, that it will never fly. They can promise whatever they want, with no real expectation of ever having to pay for it. They can take credit for their heroic act, while knowing that they will never have to pay for it. And some Blacks are going to vote for them just because they tried to make them rich. Or appeared to try to do so.
The downside is that this cannot be popular with the rapidly growing Hispanic population in the state. And they kinda have a real justification for Reparations. CA never had slavery. But it used to be part of Mexico until stolen by American gringos. (Of course, it’s more complicated than that…)
They got reparations. We won the land fair and square AND then paid them for it, to boot.
I’d also submit that the tens of trillions of dollars in federal spending allocated over decades to sundry entitlement programs — e.g., SNAP (food stamps); TANF; Section 8 housing vouchers; free cell phones; Medicaid; S-CHIP; Obamacare subsidies; etc. — already constituted a more than ample and extremely generous “reparations” program, even if these programs did not exclusively benefit black Americans.
Relying on facts, the Constitution, the courts, and the Executive -v- the desires of the Left is a risky bet.
Subotai Bahadur
Regarding the CA/Mexico question the answer isn’t really complicated. When there is a war named the Mexican-American War don’t lose it if you want to keep California. They lost it.
Oh, and when the US offers to pay you $30 million for California take the cash instead of picking a fight you can’t win. Again. (Texas says hi!).
On the plus side, it might lower crime. For a while ….
There are just so many flat screen TV, Air Jordans, Colt 45 and coke one can comsume.
well, if they actually BOUGHT anything at wallymart (instead of just helping themselves) maybe a $5 gift card each ? otherwise, how about a free n95 for a keepsake?
The tears of disappointment when the payments don’t materialize are likely to fuel anger among some, potentially leading to extreme violence. It would be a very good idea to get the hell out of CA before this occurs. You definitely don’t want to be the trail vehicle in the last convoy out of the State.
That’s the position of the quail chick we call the Designated Roadrunner Lunch.
Dear Task Force members: It’s still not enough. It should be at least twice that figure. Perhaps as much as five times. Keep up the hard work.
$800B? Each? No? Why not each?
Instead of handing out cash, close all public schools and build private/charter schools in black neighborhoods and improve the education of their children. You can bet the left would be outraged at the idea because their future as a party depends on keeping their voting base poor and uneducated.
Sanddog makes a better point then even he may know. Smart blacks, and there are a lot of them, are pointing out that the Dems won’t even let blacks have a damn voucher so their kids can go to better schools. So beholden are the Dems to teacher’s unions that black kids have to be held hostage in failing inner city schools.
Of course a lot of blacks are falling for it. But others know perfectly well that the last thing the same Dems who won’t trust blacks with a 5 figure school voucher are rich black people who can do what they want. They want to have a wedge issue that is designed to fail. Then when it fails by design they’ll blame racist Republicans/systemic racism. They tried, they’ll say, but the forces of racism are just too strong. So black people need to keep voting Democrat forever.
Smart Republicans should start a bidding war. And at the same time at least demand school vouchers and school choice as a down payment on reparations. Tell blacks to look carefully at the Dem response and then decide if they’re being played AGAIN by the racist Dems.
40 acres and a tractor? Yes, because I can roll into any inner city and find a ton of black men and women that would not only be willing to move to a farm but actually work much less know what to do with it.
The zimbabwae-fication of California
Just wait til they file their taxes.