Elizabeth Warren has made a campaign of promising nearly every identity group in existence some form of monetary handout. Whether it’s race, age, or socioeconomic background, she’s got something for you. From reparations for the descendants of slaves to paying off student loans of millennials.

The media have taken this as a sign of just how serious of a candidate she is. You see, she has “plans” and that’s what really matters here. The fact that her plans are mostly nonsensical, not possible, and sometimes even harmful don’t play into the equation.

Well, Warren isn’t done yet. She’s got a new string she’s pulling on.

Gay reparations. 

It wasn’t until marriage equality became law that gay & lesbian couples could jointly file tax returns—so they paid more in taxes. Our government owes them more than $50M for the years our discriminatory tax code left them out. We must right these wrongs. https://t.co/OZQcfVilSs

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) June 23, 2019

And it wasn’t until last year that the standard deduction was doubled, allowing me to keep more of my money. Does the government owe me reparations for their unfair tax practices before that?

Tax laws change. Certain groups who didn’t get benefits end up getting benefits down the road. Others may have them taken away. In the case of gay marriage, the country decided that the traditional definition of such and it’s purpose under tax law no longer applied.

Ok, I’m not here to relitigate that, but that’s hardly a case for paying gay people who weren’t married at the time tax refunds based on the idea that they otherwise would have been married. How do you prove that? Can any two gay people just claim they were a couple pre-gay marriage to get some of the $50M we supposedly owe them?

This is the problem with reparations of any kind. They sound good emotionally to certain political persuasions, but they are completely impractical. Warren’s claim in that tweet is unworkable on so many levels that it’s not even worth discussing.

But instead of calling her out for shameless pandering, we are told by the media at large that she’s a genius with so many ambitious “ideas.” No one has even bothered, though, to ask Warren how she’s going to pay for all these giveaways and you can bet MSNBC won’t at the first debate.

Politics isn’t kindergarten. You don’t get praise simply for smearing paint on enough sheets of paper. If someone has lots of ideas but they are bad ideas, then they deserve to be treated as such.

I’ve got a new twitter! Please help by following @bonchieredstate.