California News:
California Democrats have 14 reparations-related bills introduced this session. They are the first bills to come following the California Reparations Task Force’s final list of recommendations which are an attempt to legalize racial discrimination.
The California Reparations Task Force has taken up the affirmative action mantle and will backdoor granting preferential treatment and cash payments based on race. And now they are pushing a new State Agency to further this cause.
Early on in the Reparations Task Force, Reparations task force members made clear they were seeking state payments for being black. Task force member Jovan Scott Lewis said: “Spoiler-alert: We don’t yet know the racial wealth gap in the state of California. This is the preliminary conversation to figure out what we know and what we don’t know.”
Another task force member Dr. Cheryl Grills said: “Racial terror leads to racial trauma … also known as race-based traumatic stress,” the Globe reported in December 2022.
Remember this: “Racial wealth gap. Racial terror. Racial trauma. Race-based traumatic stress,” – they are creating new categories of grievances.
The Task Force recommended a plan that would have cost the state up to $800 billion. This received such widespread backlash from across the political spectrum, that Task Force ridiculously accused media of focusing on the monetary part of the plan. Another figure of $1.2 million to be given to each black resident was also scrutinized, the Globe reported last week.
Because of vehement opposition to giving any kind of monetary compensation coming from both California residents and lawmakers alike, all cash reparations proposals were dropped. Instead, lawmakers focused on general improvement bills, which they claimed would come at no or little cost to the taxpayer.
Senate Bill 1403, authored by Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), to create the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency, was introduced ostensibly to help facilitate any and all reparations bills passed by the Legislature and signed into law. We are told, if SB 1403 is passed, it would only create the agency, and not implement any of the bills stemming from the Task Force’s recommendations.
“This is a commonsense measure, something that’s long overdue for California and the nation,” said Senator Steven Bradford.
There is nothing common sense about the plan or proposed state agency.
The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
This is how Democrats get dubious issues passed – it’s the camel’s nose under the tent. The Judiciary Committees, as well as Public Safety Committees, have become committees where good bills go to die, and where the most radical bills are lauded.
“This looks like the kind of bill Governor Newsom is going to want to veto,” Gail Heriot, Professor of Law at University of San Diego told the Globe Tuesday. “If California creates a bureaucracy to administer reparations, the pressure to implement the Task Force’s extravagant recommendations will get stronger and stronger—like a train rolling downhill. Even if those recommendations were a good idea (which they aren’t), California cannot come close to affording them. The whole thing is irresponsible.”
SB 1403 Senate Judiciary bill analysis reports:
In 2020, the Legislature passed, and the Governor signed, SB 3121 (Weber, Ch. 319, Stats. 2020), which established the first-in-the nation Task Force to study and develop reparations proposals for California’s role in accommodating and facilitating slavery, perpetuating the vestiges of enslavement, enforcing state-sanctioned discrimination, and permitting pervasive, systematic structures of discrimination against African Americans.
The bill [SB 1403] also establishes, within the Agency, a Genealogy Office and an Office of Legal Affairs to carry out certain tasks, including determining how to establish eligibility for programs which may be adopted to provide restitution specifically to the descendants of chattel enslaved persons and free Black persons living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century. The author has proposed amendments to the bill’s definition of “descendants,” which are set forth in Part 5 of this analysis.
Here is Part 5 of this analysis in which the definition of a descendant is changed:
The author proposes the following amendments to the bill’s definition of “descendants,” which will harmonize the definition with the one in SB 1331 (Bradford, 2024). Deletions are in strikethrough and additions are in bold/underline, and the changes are subject to any nonsubstantive changes the Office of Legislative Counsel may make.
Amendment
At page 2, in lines 12-14, modify as follows: (b) “Descendants” means African American descendants of a an African American chattel enslaved person in the United States or descendants of a free Black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century.
The newest definition of descendent is shameless and just plain embarrassing for California.
As the Globe reported last August, “reparations of any type are likely violations of Proposition 209, recently reinforced by a second statewide vote. Those omissions are additional illustrations that the Cal DOJ has been converted from a major law enforcement agency into a slimy major political enforcement agency, and can never be trusted.”
“Members of the Reparations Commission that controlled creation of the reparations report were far from diverse in ethnic or ideological makeup, illustrating the pre-ordained ‘loaded dice’ outcome, that would never be allowed on a jury in a California court.”
The final report of the California Reparations Task Force outlined a very long list of more than 100 recommendations on how descendants of slaves in California could receive some form of compensation. You can read the list here.
As the Globe reported in January 2023, both the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee and State Reparations Task Force are expanding reparations beyond slavery. It’s become a cash grab and hustle for all grievances. But where does this end?
And what laws will reparations run up against?
Proposition 209, a ban on affirmative action and race based preferences, was passed by California voters in 1996, and prohibits discrimination or preferential treatment by the state, public universities, public employment, or other public entities, and banned affirmative action policies.
In 2020, voters even reaffirmed the ban on affirmative action policies and practices by voting down Proposition 16, 57% to 42%. Prop. 16 qualified for the ballot when ACA 5, authored by then-Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), was passed by the California legislature in 2020. If passed, Prop. 16 would have repealed Proposition 209.
However, as we reported in January, both the San Francisco and state Reparations committees are seriously neglecting the state’s rich ethnic history, favoring race hustling instead. California was not
A local historian friend sent this:
“Before and during the Civil War militia companies were ethnic, generally social groups with others from the ‘old country’ such as German, Irish, and Italian companies all over northern California. This was not then considered segregation, it was a place to socialize with those of similar backgrounds. Sacramento had a black militia company in that era. Many from those units joined the California Volunteers and fought in the eastern battles.
In the [Sacramento] Land Park area (there is a monument marker in the park) was Camp Union Sutterville where seven regiments of infantry, two regiments of cavalry, and smaller specialized units were trained and participated primarily in two Union moves. One was to replace regular army troops in the west and they garrisoned posts all the way to Salt Lake City, founding an army base in that area that is still active. The other went to southern California and joined units raised in that area. Confederates had occupied what is now Arizona and New Mexico up to the California border. Camp Union troops were involved with pushing them back into Texas and when the war ended Sacramento troops were well established in that state.”
Every kid in California should know this. And every California voter should be embarrassed that our elected lawmakers are pursuing such a blatant scheme to enrich “descendants of a free Black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century.”
As the Globe reported, the state Reparations Task Force is pulling a bait-and-switch on Californians – with talk of a “racial wealth gap,” “racial terror,” “race-based traumatic stress,” and “guaranteed income for dependents of slaves.” But what they are really promoting is social justice reparations and nothing more than a redistribution of wealth.
Reparations talk is a distraction from the failures of the governance of California. But distractions are the best failing politicians can come up with.
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Author: Katy Grimes
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