California Democrats continue to pursue legislation aimed at reparations for slavery — even though the Golden State entered the Union in 1850 as a free state, and even though the state currently faces a massive budget deficit.
The Wall Street Journal noted earlier this week:
The California Senate’s Judiciary Committee voted 8 to 1 this month to create the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency. This would be an agency to implement recommendations from the state’s task force on reparations. It would establish a Genealogy Office to determine who would be eligible for a reparations windfall.
Days later the same committee cleared two other reparations bills. They are part of a package of 14 bills introduced in January. One bill approved by the committee would restore or compensate African-Americans for land taken for racially motivated reasons. The other bill would set aside 6% of state budget reserves to fund reparations.
The state’s budget deficit was recently projected to be $73 billion — nearly twice as much as the $38 billion that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) had originally estimated. Just two years ago, California enjoyed a $100 billion surplus, thanks in part to federal coronavirus relief funds.
Newsom and other Democrats across the state backed reparations committees in the midst of the Black Lives Matter panic of 2020. But as recommendations began to roll in — such as $5 million per black resident in San Francisco — elected officials mysteriously lost their enthusiasm for the idea.
Newsom backed away from cash reparations, for example, and San Francisco shuttered its reparations office for lack of funds.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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