It's become a regular thing now for the left to propose paying vast reparations to various groups, all financed, of course, not by them but by taxpayers.
Some people are suspicious that this is a ploy to curry favor with select, allegedly aggrieved groups and, you know, maybe cause them to vote for candidates on the left. How could anyone think such a thing?
The most familiar bid for reparations, of course, is over slavery, paying large sums of public monies to blacks who never were slaves but may possibly have had some undocumented distant connection to people who were slaves back in the 1800s, before President Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War ended it. But they are now all dead.
And use money from taxpayers who never had slaves or anything to do with that bygone institution, but are alive and have jobs to support their families by earning money now to pay taxes.
San Francisco is seeking donations to a fund that would pay reparations to blacks who claim city policies have hurt them in the past years.
Now, Chicago's left-wing City Council under left-wing Mayor Brandon Johnson is taking that scheme to new depths. It has appropriated half a million dollars to study the idea of paying reparations to — Wait for it! — illegal aliens.
The claimed reason has to do with ICE and the Border Patrol. However, there is a very serious — and, I would point out, obvious — problem with that. I have some quick thoughts on all that.
Listen to this brief commentary by clicking on the flag here, then, as always, leave your own thoughts in the Comments below:
This week on Sunday, I posted another in the ongoing series of Malcolm's Memories about that awkward day that some Vietnamese refugees on Guam, who had never been outside their homeland, asked me to explain this Easter Bunny business that they had heard about on the radio. "Oh, sure!" I said.
Big mistake.
The Sunday column this week examined the little-known background and contents of the ongoing dispute with Canada in light of the province of Alberta's public drive to vote on separating from Canada.
Proponents say they have acquired the required number of petition signatures to get the issue on the provincial ballot this fall. Which has ignited much discussion about what relationship, if any, the border province might want to have with the United States if that happens.
The separation issue is a perennial one in Canada, the second-largest country in the world. Quebec has voted twice on secession and appears possibly en route to a third try to pull apart from Canada.
It's something that should be of important interest to the United States since Canada is the only country that separates it from Russia. And we've seen in Ukraine these past four years how Russia prefers to treat neighbors and create divisions.
Based on my lifelong family and professional connections to our northern neighbor, or neighbour, I argue that a main reason behind all these votes is that Canada is a very important ally and economic partner for the United States. But it is not really a nation in the true meaning of that often-misused word.
The most recent audio commentary examined an issue that could be one to get some lazy voters off their couch and to the polls this November for the crucial midterm elections that will determine the political fate of President Trump's final two years in the White House.
We know the issue of Donald Trump himself will get Democrats to the polls along with every one of those chronically-afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. The volatile topic of boys in girls' locker rooms is on the ballot in several states.
