[PJ] California’s state legislature just passed, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed, Assembly Bill 3121 to explore providing reparations to California’s African American population — 155 years after the abolition of slavery.Apparently, when California’s one-party government cannot find solutions to current existential crises, it turns to divisive issues that have little to do with the safety and well-being of its 40 million citizens.
California has the highest gas taxes in the nation, even as its ossified state highways remain clogged and dangerous. Why, then, does Sacramento kept pouring billions of dollars into the now-calcified high-speed rail project?
When fires raged, killed dozens, polluted the air for months, consumed thousands of structures and scorched 4 million acres of forest, in response the governor thundered about global warming. But Newsom was mostly mute about state and federal green polices that discouraged the removal of millions of dead and drought-stricken trees, which provided the kindling for the infernos.
When gasoline, sales and income taxes rose, and yet state schools became even worse, infrastructure remained decrepit and deficits grew, California demanded that federal COVID-19 money bail out its own financial mismanagement.
In a time of pandemic, mass quarantine, self-induced recession, riot, arson and looting, the California way is to borrow money to spend on something that will not address why residents can’t find a job, can’t rely on their power grid, can’t drive safely, can’t breathe the air, can’t ensure a high-quality education for their children, and can’t walk the streets of the state’s major cities without fear of being assaulted or stepping in excrement.
So it is a poor time to discuss reparations, even if there were good reasons to borrow to pay out such compensation. But in fact there are none.