Three years ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom created California’s Reparations Task Force. The stated goal was to establish a “path to reparations that could serve as a model for the nation.”
Lucky us, huh?
Last year the Task Force released their report and recommendations. The report suggested “providing cash payments to all descendants based on health disparities, mass incarceration and over-policing and housing discrimination that have adversely affected Black residents compared with white Californians.”
“The remedies recommended in the report also go far beyond cash payments and include policies to end the death penalty, pay fair market value for jail and prison labor, restore voting rights to all formerly and currently incarcerated people and apply rent caps to historically redlined ZIP Codes that disadvantaged Black residents, among dozens of other suggestions.”
They also conveniently applied a price tag for the payments to those injured by these historical “injustices” including:
- $13,619 for descendants for each year of residency in California;
- $2,352 for each year of residency a descendent lived in California during the war on drugs from 1971 – 2020 (this is to compensate on the over-policing and mass incarceration)
- $3,378 for housing discrimination for each year between 1933 and 1977 that a descendent lived in California.
They even created a website where California’s 2.6 million Black residents can go to calculate what their reparations check is likely to be.
All of this, is of course, dependent upon the progressive California legislature approving a payment package to fund these recommendations. Imagine legislators surprise when The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies recently released a poll showing that by a 2:1 margin, California voters opposed these payments. Interestingly the lack of support is amazing enough but the poll showed that 4 in 10 voters polled “strongly” opposed these cash payments.
But thank you, Gov. Newsom, for helping enlighten the rest of America on your latest attempt to bankrupt the Golden State.