The last time we checked on the subject of reparations for slavery within the U.S., California Governor Gavin Newsom was less than enthusiastic about writing massive reparations checks recommended by the racialist panel he was responsible for forming. This lack of enthusiasm is likely to have grown since then, as the state now has a $68 billion dollar budget deficit.
Now, New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul has entered the race to the bottom, approving a panel for a slavery reparations commission for her state.
“In New York, we like to think we’re on the right side of this. Slavery was a product of the South, the Confederacy,” Hochul, a Democrat, said at the bill signing ceremony in New York City. “What is hard to embrace is the fact that our state also flourished from that slavery. It’s not a beautiful story, but indeed it is the truth.”Under the law, which was passed by state lawmakers in June, the study commission will examine the extent to which the federal and state government supported the institution of slavery. It will also look at how New York, which fully abolished slavery by 1827, engaged in the transfer of enslaved Africans and the ongoing effects of the institution on Black New Yorkers today.
Hochul is already being blasted for approving this plan, with many critics citing California’s experience with its greedy, racialist commission.
A commission to study the possibility of giving reparations to black New Yorkers was officially created by Gov. Kathy Hochul Tuesday — prompting critics to blast the move as “unlikely to lead to anything, after the failures of such efforts elsewhere “unrealistic” and “divisive.”New York’s new commission follows a similar one in California, which hasn’t shown any serious signs of acting on its reparations panel’s eye-popping proposal of a $1.2 million payment to nearly every black citizen.Critics suspect the same may happen here.“A divisive commission to consider reparations is unworkable,” Republican Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt wrote in a statement. “As we’ve seen in California, I am confident this commission’s recommendations will be unrealistic, will come at an astronomical cost to all New Yorkers, and will only further divide our state.”
I can easily predict how the New York reparations panel will behave. To begin with, after scores of “listening” sessions that are filled with anti-white rhetoric, the amount of reparations will steadily increase. In California, the first demands from the panel would have cost $500 billion (more than the total state budget at the time)…and then the commission increased the amount to $800 billion.
The reparations commission will then make special demands of the state. There will be requests to close prisons and restore civil privileges to felons. There will be demands for a wealth tax (e.g., mansion tax) in the name of equity and fairness.
New York GOP Chairman Ed Cox clearly has watched the California reparations panel in action. He also expects complete failure and even more racial division.
…Cox slammed Hochul’s signing as “misguided” and criticized her for not focusing on other challenges facing the state, like the recent influx of migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border.”Governor Hochul’s decision to endorse this divisive and unproductive reparations study is misguided,” Cox said in a statement. “Instead of focusing on the issues that truly matter to New Yorkers, like our ongoing immigration crisis, crime, and the exodus of residents from our state, she’s chosen to reopen old wounds and stoke racial tensions for political gain.”
As a reminder, California was not a slave state. New York was not a slave state. It also contributed about 465,000 soldiers to the Union armed forces (more than any other state). Over 50,000 of them died. I would argue that the reparations commission should simply meet and offer its sincere gratitude to the New York soldiers who served and died during the Civil War.
But sadly, we live in an era when real heroes are forgotten, and many want to get special privileges based on their self-acclaimed victim status.
As a Californian, I do have some good news to share with my New York friends. I suspect the New York Commission’s numbers and suggestions will be ignored…just like Newsom is ignoring his commission’s demands.
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