California, where slavery was never legal, has a reparations task force that seems to know no upper limit to the amount that it wants Californians who never owned slaves to pay to Californians who never were slaves. The task force voted Saturday to make every black Californian a millionaire, because the society that made racial discrimination a federal crime in 1964 is still so racist that they all would have been millionaires by now, you see, if only whitey hadn’t been keeping them down. But a hate-filled racist white supremacist in California has just blocked the road to easy street. His name? Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In a move reminiscent of George Wallace standing at the door of the schoolhouse and proclaiming “Segregation now, segregation forever,” Newsom refused to agree that every black resident of California should be handed $1.2 million as recompense for all the racism they have suffered at the hands of other residents of the Golden State, which is well known to be filled with whites-only drinking fountains and angry white mobs spitting hatred at tiny black children who just want to go to school.
In the face of the Let’s-Make-Every-Black-Person-A-Millionaire proposal, Newsom inexcusably retreated into platitudes, saying that he was actually in favor of the reparations push, but that it was “about much more than cash payments.” Come on, Gavin! That sounds just like something Bull Connor would say! Newsom had nothing but praise for the task force, however, even though he refused to endorse its central proposal. “This has been an important process,” Newsom declared, “and we should continue to work as a nation to reconcile our original sin of slavery and understand how that history has shaped our country.” Still, Newsom wasn’t ready to pledge to force non-black Californians to cough up billions to atone for this “original sin.”
Continuing in this same racist, white supremacist vein, Newsom claimed that much of what the reparations task force had done was actually redundant: “Many of the recommendations put forward by the Task Force are critical action items we’ve already been hard at work addressing: breaking down barriers to vote, bolstering resources to address hate, enacting sweeping law enforcement and justice reforms to build trust and safety, strengthening economic mobility — all while investing billions to root out disparities and improve equity in housing, education, healthcare, and well beyond.” The pleading in his voice was obvious: We’ve appeased and accommodated you this far, can’t you give us a break now? The answer, of course, will be no.
It’s hard to have any sympathy for Gavin Newsom, as the reparations push is in line with his entire Marxist agenda. It is an effort to confiscate wealth from those who produce it and redistribute it to those who, Newsom and his henchmen assume, will burn through it and become dependent on the state, or even more dependent on the state than they are now.
Related: Recipe for Disaster: With $22.5 Billion Deficit, California Looks to Pay $640 Billion in Reparations
Like all Marxists, however, Newsom either doesn’t realize or doesn’t care that this scheme will not result in genuine “equity” and economic parity between white and black Californians. Those who are capable of producing wealth on their own, both white and black, will continue to do so, and those who are not willing or able to do so, again both white and black, will continue to be dependent on the state. By so ruthlessly penalizing those who produce wealth, however, the reparations scheme will ensure that California and everyone in it become poor. Productive people who don’t like the idea of paying a penalty for something they didn’t do will flee the state, or simply opt to become less productive and thus less able to fund Newsom’s grandiloquent socialist schemes. Those who receive the reparations money and don’t know or care how to make money on their own will still not know after the reparations money is gone, and then they will demand more.
California has been an economic powerhouse of the United States, but Gavin Newsom and his fellow Leftists have taken a wrecking ball to it, and its legendary productivity will, before too long, be a thing of the past. The reparations madness is just one part of that. And even without Newsom’s endorsement of this present recommendation, the reparations push will go on, and reparations will eventually be paid. That will be the coup de grace for the Golden State.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member