This story is nearly unbelievable. In fact, my host last night at a modest New Years Eve celebration, a good progressive and reliable Democrat, refused to believe it and insisted what I related was conservative media fake news. It is so embarrassing to the Mad Left, in fact, that the New York Times, among others, has so far refused to report it, and so have many other Axis news sources. The story is this, from the Daily Mail yesterday:
“The mayor of San Francisco discreetly approved a bill to create a fund that may eventually grant each of the city’s eligible black residents $5 million in reparations. Mayor Daniel Lurie quietly signed the incredibly divisive Reparations Bill just two days before Christmas. The ordinance establishes a reparations fund, as recommended by the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) in its 2023 report. The legislation merely establishes the fund but does not allocate any money to it – setting up the framework for any future contributions, whether they be through the city or privately donated…San Francisco journalist Erica Sandberg was among the first to highlight what Mayor Lurie had done. Per the 2023 report, every eligible African-American adult in San Francisco should be handed a $5 million lump sum to ‘compensate the affected population for the decades of harm that they have experienced.’ Approximately 50,000 black people live in San Francisco, and the qualifying requirements remain unclear.”
The report continues, “In 2023, the conservative public policy think-tank the Hoover Institution said the plan would cost each non-African American household in the city about $600,000 in tax dollars.” Oh! Just a drop in the bucket! Nonetheless, the Mayor signed the bill, and in this mind-boggling statement, explained that white San Franciscan shouldn’t worry because, see, there’s no way the city will ever be able to actually use the reparations fund:
“For several years, communities across the city have been working with the government to acknowledge the decades of harm done to San Francisco’s black community. While that process largely predates my administration, I am signing the legislation to create this fund in recognition of the work of so many San Franciscans and the unanimous support of the Board of Supervisors.”
Mayor Lurie then noted that the city will have a $1 billion budget deficit next year. So, he “explained,”
“That means identifying key priorities for funding so we can continue delivering those services well. Given these historic fiscal challenges, the city does not have resources to allocate to this fund.”
Wait, WHAT? Does that make any sense at all? To sign into existence a crazy reparations fund that you know cannot possibly be implemented, because, well, the commission that recommended it worked really hard on its idiotic, impossible and unethical recommendation….that’s the mayor’s reasoning?
As an aside, I had an unusually hard time deciding what graphic to use to lead off this post. It is obviously an Ethics Alarms “Ripley,” reserved for ethics stories so bizarre that the famous oddity cartoonist would have had to feature it in his iconic comics section feature if he were not fortunate enough to be dead. But the story also made my head explode, justifying this…
…and it immediately reminded me of this moment from “Jurassic Park”…
I was also tempted to lead with a photo of the ridiculous mayor, because if there has ever been a portrait of a simpering, untrustworthy weenie, this is it:
The law is signature significance in so, so many ways, indicting the city, its government, the citizens who would vote for such fools, the party they belong to, and the cracked ideology that would make such irresponsible and dishonest conduct seem rational for a nanosecond.
Let’s see…
1. Reparations constitutes the financial penalizing of members of the public solely on the basis of race, taking money from them for “damages” they had no part in creating, against individuals who are no longer alive.
2. Such a measure is almost certainly illegal and unconstitutional.
3. It is particularly inappropriate in California, which never allowed slavery.
4. There can be no fair or acceptable method of deciding who qualifies as “black.” The process alone would be prohibitively expensive, and would be bogged down by litigation. The formula would have to include some measure of minimum tenure in the state to justify receiving the skin color bonus.
5. The law is an insult to the intelligence of blacks in San Francisco and African American generally. Are they expected to applaud being gifted with a phantom windfall that can’t possibly be executed?
6. The law is the apotheosis of current progressive thought. Never mind that a policy can’t possibly work, wouldn’t it be nice if it did? Aren’t the officials who passed it wonderful to pretend that they are going to give away billions they don’t have?
How can any voter continue to place trust in a political party capable of indulging in this kind of empty virtue signaling. This is 21st Century progressivism; this is today’s Democratic Party; this is exactly what it looks like. No wonder the news media is reluctant to let the public know about it. Here’s the other graphic I was tempted to use….
This story is the ultimate unmasking.
Ethics Alarms 
The problem I have with current reparations plans is that there is no logical end to it.
Say all 50,000 blacks in San Francisco get the money. Three generations from now, the children of those recipients would have just as valid a claim for reparations as the recipients do.
-Jut
“Simply being connected to a historical event does not provide a person with unlimited rights to seek compensation from any project in any way related to that historical event.”
So said the Tulsa city attorney during oral argument of the City’s motion to dismiss a 2023 lawsuit seeking compensation filed on behalf of three elderly citizens who were all children at the time of the infamous 1921 Tulsa Massacre. Oklahoma Superior Court Judge Caroline Wall agreed and threw the case out.
Like it or not, though, what the city attorney said was right, and I think it’s just what this nation needs to hear in this time of what’s quickly becoming social justice fatigue. There’s a point where someone has to say that it’s both unworkable and unfair for today’s people to be accountable for things they did not do, especially by people who did not have those things done to them, but even by those that did if there is no actual wrongdoer who can now be identified. Otherwise, there could be a theoretical indefinite claim for compensation.
I’m sure someone could hire an economics expert to write up a report with projected wealth for a potential claimant, but I’m not sure if it would be admissible as evidence, given the passing now of more than a century. Then there is also the question of the applicable statute of limitations. Those are there for a reason, specifically to prevent the bringing of claims that are stale due to the passage of time and loss of witnesses, fading memories, and so on. Then there is also the question of liability for the wrongs of ancestors transferring to descendants. There is a certain level of legal protection for good faith buyers of items that might have not been legally obtained, especially after the passage of time. There’s a really big question of how are you going to prove these claims and against who. How do you prove the amount of the loss? How do you even quantify it? How do you establish fault and how do you apportion it? Is it a good thing to hold descendants three generations down the line responsible for something that ancestors they never even met did? Is that a precedent you want to set?
Daniel Lurie, the current mayor of San Francisco and signatory of this little piece of sleight of hand, and Dan Goldman, the, needless to say, Democrat congressman representing Jerry Nadler’s old district, the 10th Congressional District covering the lower part of Manhattan and a western portion of Brooklyn, are both Levi Strauss heirs. Who knew the inventor of canvas work clothes held together at various points by rivets would visit such a plague upon the nation nearly two hundred years after he started business. Again, “What’s wrong with these people?” And here people are saying common sense is making a comeback. Sheesh.
I am waiting for the citizens of San Francisco to say we all need to pay our fair share and we know the city employees worked very hard but at this time we are struggling to pay our own bills and are running deficits so we cannot provide funding for city functions.
If there are 50,000 blacks in San Francisco, then this would be a bill of $250 billion. Yikes!
For every 1 million blacks who got this handout, it would be $5 trillion. We’d be looking back on a public debt of $30 trillion with fond nostalgia.
Well, until we got some serious inflation and that $5 million would buy a single sack of groceries. At that point, paying a few trillion is no problem, just print more money.
Yes, what is wrong with these people?