There are dumb ideas, like wearing your hair in a mullet. Then there are catastrophically dumb ideas, like marching on Moscow. Then there are the gobsmackingly, face-palmingly dumb ideas, like the various "reparations" schemes. Whether the reparations be for slavery, or discrimination, or whatever, too many of them involve redressing the grievances of people who never suffered these things at the expense of people who never did any of these things.
So, of course, San Francisco is all-in on this stupidity. They passed a reparations ordinance, and are now looking down the bore of a lawsuit.
A lawsuit is challenging a San Francisco ordinance that establishes a reparations fund for Black residents.
The ordinance, signed in December by San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, a Democrat, is aimed at addressing systematic harms. Even so, the Pacific Legal Foundation said this is wrong.
“The purpose of the lawsuit is to make sure that the city and county of San Francisco is not spending taxpayer dollars on an unconstitutional, unlawful plan, which is the reparations plan,” Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Andrew Quinio told The Center Square this week. “By having the San Francisco Human Rights Commission administer the funds to implement this reparations plan, San Francisco is engaging in steps that will carry out a plan that violates the Constitution.”
Questions: How do you quantify "systemic harms"? Who is eligible? This says "black" residents.
What if someone has a black parent and a white parent? Do they get half the payment? Or does the one-drop rule apply?
Here's the bit about the lawsuit:
Pacific Legal Foundation filed the pro bono lawsuit on behalf of San Francisco residents Richard “Richie” Greenberg and Arthur Ritchie, as well as the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation.
“I’ve been keenly paying attention to this issue of reparations for several years now, watching as city hall officials (and now the mayor) have consistently ignored law and constitutional rights of us taxpayers," said Greenberg in a CFER news release. “I have reached out to the Board of Supervisors, the mayor, the city attorney, and the reparations committee itself to demand they cease wasting taxpayers’ money on this unconstitutional plan, and the time has come to bring them to court.”
Good. You can read all about Pacific Legal's suit here.
Read More: Has America Had Enough of the Race-Baiters?
Washington's Governor Ferguson Commits Reparations Outrage
The shouting for "reparations" is, of course, another manifestation of his usual “I want the government to take money away from group A and give it to group B.” Well, presumably white people are group A, and black people are group B. The original sin may be slavery, and one may be able to determine some slave ancestry if sufficient records are available, which is doubtful. The original sin may be "systemic harms," which can't even be defined. And what about a black person whose ancestors have suffered neither? A certain former president I could name, for example, whose father was a black man from Kenya and his mother was a white woman from America, who was raised in large part by his wealthy white grandparents in a life of wealth and privilege? Does he get the payment, due only to his melanin content?
That's actually racist. And, we must note, San Francisco isn't the only place going in for this idiocy. Evanston, Illinois, is also buying into this horse squeeze.
Established in 2019 and approved by the City Council in 2021, the program issues $25,000 direct cash payments to Black residents and descendants of Black residents who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969.
Evanston was the first city in the nation to pass a reparations plan, pledging $10 million over a decade to Black residents.
We might note that neither California nor Illinois was ever a slave state.
This isn't about any feather-headed notion of justice. It's pandering and vote-buying. Nothing else but.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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