Good question: Why is the San Francisco City Council so terribly cruel?
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Jubilee day! San Franciscans line up at board meeting to sing and shout their support for a reparations plan to give every black resident $5M, wipe personal debt, provide $97K incomes and homes for just $1 - and no one asks how the city will foot the bill
Stephen Green. San Francisco, reparations and the racist cruelty of empty promises
Reparations had San Francisco residents lining up at a Tuesday night city board meeting to “share their full-throated support” for wide-ranging benefits paid out to the descendants of slaves, reported the Daily Mail. “The proposals put forward in San Francisco last night are among some of the most generous to be heard to date,” and that leaves me with two questions.
“My dad always taught me never to beg. And I am not begging you today. It is time for you to do the right thing and provide us with reparations: make us whole,” insisted Sgt. Yulanda Williams, president of the police association Officers for Justice. The council must have listened because what they came up with has a whole lotta spendin’ going on.
Technically, Williams did not beg. She insisted. And she insisted to the right audience, because wait until you see what the city looks ready to pay in reparations.
Qualifying black residents would receive an annual stipend of $97,000 for the next 250 years, have their personal debt wiped out, the “right” to buy a local home for one dollar, and enjoy a one-time lump-sum payment of [activate Dr. Evil voice] FIVE MILLION DOLLARS.
Green demonstrates how and why this isn’t going to work, but any sane person, of whom there are at least a handful here on this blog, knows that already, so we’ll just skip to his conclusion:
San Francisco will never pay these reparations. Just to make the stipend happen, the city would have to raise 50% more revenue or cut services on everything else by the same amount. It’s impossible to raise that much tax revenue, and no lender would look at those terms and loan City Hall a cent. I haven’t even looked at the cash flow hazards, like how taxpayers would flee while beneficiaries would race in.
So my fourth question is: why is the San Francisco City Council so terribly cruel, to promise so much to their black constituents, when they know they’ll deliver so little? Sgt. Yulanda Williams seems so genuinely excited. How will she feel when the checks bounce or, as seems more likely, are never delivered?
Bonus material
Deroy Murdock has still more questions:
….. Shamann Walton is right: If people exist who were brought to America in chains, raped and forced to labor without wages, they should sue their owners and make them pay until they bleed.
The bad — but incredibly good — news is that America has lacked both slaves and slave owners since the Civil War ended in April 1865.
Any child born into slavery that month would be 157 today or, more likely, dead.
Ditto any slave holder who would be older — or even deader.
Since the parties directly affected by slavery are long gone, the questions of who would collect and who would pay reparations quickly become self-entangling.
Who is black enough to get paid? Any black San Franciscan or only those with ancestors in the slave-owning South?
Should wealthy and successful San Franciscans — e.g. Vice President Kamala Harris — receive reparations? How about her ex-lover, Willie Brown, San Francisco’s former two-term mayor? Can anyone seriously argue that slavery hindered them as they occupied America’s commanding heights?
What about San Franciscans of mixed race? Harris is half-Jamaican and half east Indian. Do her Caribbean roots disqualify her from a program designed to address the evils of the old South? Should she still collect if, despite no ties to Dixie, she routinely bolts upright after nightmares about being oppressed on a plantation?
Stanford University emeritus professor Donald Harris, Kamala’s father, wrote that his family descended from Irish-born Hamilton Brown, who owned at least 121 Jamaican slaves. Should the vice-president get penalized for this, perhaps scoring only $1.25 million or half of the $2.5 million that she could earn as a half-black woman?
As for payment, does the great, great, great, great granddaughter of a slave owner or Confederate general pay more than her “fair share” into the reparations fund?
Conversely, does a San Franciscan whose forebears fell at Antietam or Shiloh deserve a “We gave at the office” discount?
What about someone who fled the carnage of Ukraine and took refuge in America only last August? Must someone who reached this country six month ago pay reparations for something that ended 157 years ago?
Who, exactly, would make all of these excruciating and potentially explosive decisions rooted as much in genetics as justice?
Local officials are weighing other concepts including “a comprehensive debt forgiveness program” for blacks and a plan to boost poor blacks’ earnings to match the $97,000 Area Median Income — “for at least 250 years.”
Would shoveling out this kind of cash until 2273 A.D. bankrupt this town?
No way, Walton said reassuringly. “I would say that we’re a very fiscally responsible city.”
Finally, assume that $5 million turned out to be a fair and equitable reparations payout. What if San Francisco’s model were applied nationwide?
To give $5 million to each of America’s 42 million black citizens would cost $210 trillion. This equals 667% of the $31.5 trillion U.S. national debt. These $210 trillion could fund the Pentagon’s $740 billion FY 2022 budget until 2307 A.D. — 284 years hence.
If you think egg prices are high now, just wait until Joe Biden hears about San Francisco’s big idea.
hamann Walton is right: If people exist who were brought to America in chains, raped and forced to labor without wages, they should sue their owners and make them pay until they bleed.
The bad — but incredibly good — news is that America has lacked both slaves and slave owners since the Civil War ended in April 1865.
Any child born into slavery that month would be 157 today or, more likely, dead.
Ditto any slave holder who would be older — or even deader.
Since the parties directly affected by slavery are long gone, the questions of who would collect and who would pay reparations quickly become self-entangling.
Who is black enough to get paid? Any black San Franciscan or only those with ancestors in the slave-owning South?
Should wealthy and successful San Franciscans — e.g. Vice President Kamala Harris — receive reparations? How about her ex-lover, Willie Brown, San Francisco’s former two-term mayor? Can anyone seriously argue that slavery hindered them as they occupied America’s commanding heights?
What about San Franciscans of mixed race? Harris is half-Jamaican and half east Indian. Do her Caribbean roots disqualify her from a program designed to address the evils of the old South? Should she still collect if, despite no ties to Dixie, she routinely bolts upright after nightmares about being oppressed on a plantation?
Stanford University emeritus professor Donald Harris, Kamala’s father, wrote that his family descended from Irish-born Hamilton Brown, who owned at least 121 Jamaican slaves. Should the vice-president get penalized for this, perhaps scoring only $1.25 million or half of the $2.5 million that she could earn as a half-black woman?
As for payment, does the great, great, great, great granddaughter of a slave owner or Confederate general pay more than her “fair share” into the reparations fund?
Conversely, does a San Franciscan whose forebears fell at Antietam or Shiloh deserve a “We gave at the office” discount?
What about someone who fled the carnage of Ukraine and took refuge in America only last August? Must someone who reached this country six month ago pay reparations for something that ended 157 years ago?
Who, exactly, would make all of these excruciating and potentially explosive decisions rooted as much in genetics as justice?
Local officials are weighing other concepts including “a comprehensive debt forgiveness program” for blacks and a plan to boost poor blacks’ earnings to match the $97,000 Area Median Income — “for at least 250 years.”
Would shoveling out this kind of cash until 2273 A.D. bankrupt this town?
No way, Walton said reassuringly. “I would say that we’re a very fiscally responsible city.”
Finally, assume that $5 million turned out to be a fair and equitable reparations payout. What if San Francisco’s model were applied nationwide?
To give $5 million to each of America’s 42 million black citizens would cost $210 trillion. This equals 667% of the $31.5 trillion U.S. national debt. These $210 trillion could fund the Pentagon’s $740 billion FY 2022 budget until 2307 A.D. — 284 years hence.
If you think egg prices are high now, just wait until Joe Biden hears about San Francisco’s big idea.
