And a south-facing scree slope isn’t any more suitable. Neither is a south-facing slope with a grade over certain percentage, or a south-facing slope covered with too much brush or boulders. In addition to a southern exposure, you need stable, relatively open, and relatively flat ground.
Most of rural America doesn’t HAVE government-funded hospitals (fewer than a fifth of community hospitals in the US are owned by or receive substantial operational funding from the government). A huge percentage of the people living on farms or out in the desert don’t have government-funded water infrastructure either; they have wells they paid for themselves, or they haul water from somewhere. Rural communities losing their grocery stores is a huge issue in the western US; no, retailers are NOT eager to build stores where there aren’t very many customers. School consolidation and lack of local schools is another hot-button issue. Have you ever actually lived anywhere in rural America?
Cite for this particular figure.
“Discomfort”? How about death?
How many people were helped by this spending, versus how many do you think you can assist with what dollar amount of federal funding?
How do you propose to bind future administrations (federal and state) to guarantee that subsidies will continue? Also, how will “federally guaranteed power purchase agreements” work, given that a lot of the utilities involved are privately owned? Are they going to be compelled to purchase power at a federally-regulated price?
Frankly, your proposal has more than a little in common with the history of Indian reservations in the US, and the late-19th-century mindset of expecting the Indians to become yeoman farmers by doling out land to them (cf. Dawes Act of 1887). Give them some lousy land (if the land was all that desirable for solar farms, the industry would seek it out naturally), remove them from their existing social structure and dump them out in undesirable locations, and it will all magically be better. Why would black Americans WANT to live in remote locations with few amenities and no jobs other than the solar farm?
Is there something other than the economic legacy of slavery that your proposal addresses? Directly?
I’m saying that means-tested programs address the same concerns as your proposed reparations, but they don’t have race-based discrimination built in.
Under what circumstances would a means-tested homestead act approve of applications from more white people than Black people? The only circumstances I can think of are:
Black people don’t apply for homesteads, in which case your proposal would be equally useless.
White people are worse off economically, and therefore qualify over Black people for the homesteads. In this case, the justification for your proposal rests on a false premise.
The program is administered in an unfair and racist manner, so as to discriminate against Black people and favor whites.
And just as there are north facing slopes, there is also flat land.
Then those are issues that the homesteaders will have to deal with as well.
It’s getting closer to 3 trillion
Most of the money was not directed at saving lives, just maintaining incomes and helping out “small business”
The descendants of slaves are about 1/8th of america, if we help 1/4th of them like the previous homestead acts did for white people, it will change the conversation around race in america.
So once we guarantee a power purchase agreement something, we can’t back out, it’s part of the whole ("validty of the public debt shall not be questioned)
The tax incentives once given cannot be taken away after the incentivized act is taken.
This all assumes that there is grid parity or close to it.
The industry cannot access the 640 million acres of federal land (approximately 28% of all land in america). Presumably the homesteaders won’t pick the shittiest pieces of land available. The dawes act is very different. It took currently existing indian land and chopped it up and divided it up amongst individual native americans. They didn’t train them and set them up in a business and guarantee a buyer for their product.
Why would black americans want to live on their own farm and operate their own business that has a guaranteed buyer for 25 years? So that they can achieve the american dream and build something for future generations. Why did the white homesteaders establish homesteads in even more remote, with even fewer amenities and jobs?
Yes the relative poverty rates among blacks vs whites. One of the legacies of slavery is a disproportionate concentration of poverty among blacks.
The race based discrimination is a feature, not a flaw. It is intentional.
The rate of poverty is higher among blacks than whites but there are more white poor people than black poor people. This is a function of there being a lot more white people.
Have you actually investigated whether there is adequate usable land (proper topography, surface, and location) for this project, or are you just hand-waving away that little problem?
So you are expecting people to move from places that have hospitals and schools and roads and stores and infrastructure and amenities to places that don’t, and just “deal with it”? Can you explain why you think this would be an improvement on their existing situation?
Remember, the people already in these areas have established lives and social ties and landholdings or economic positions, and they are fleeing; large swathes of western Kansas, for example, had more people in 1930 than they do today.
The whole point of NEEDING to maintain incomes and help out small businesses was because of the deaths and the potential for more deaths.
So how much money (dollar figure, please) are you guesstimating it will take to help 1/4 of 1/8 of American descendants of slaves? Can you do it for a trillion dollars, or three trillion?
You still haven’t explained how you expect these federally guaranteed power purchase agreements to work. Are you going to fix a price at which the utilities will be required to buy the power? How good are you at setting a price that will be realistic in 25 years time?
Will there be grid parity for these generation projects? What happens if there is not?
What leads you to think the homesteaders with no experience will be BETTER at picking the right pieces of land than the solar experts who pick land? (Your contention that the industry cannot access federal land is false.)
Why would black Americans want to move far from their existing homes and social ties on the promise that this new government program will actually help them, instead of being yet another federal boondoggle that has the potential to leave them stuck somewhere with inadequate resources, in communities that don’t want them, with unmanageable loan payments?
White homesteaders largely didn’t. They homesteaded principally in areas close to the railroad lines, where they had a ready outlet for their production, and where the farm was expected to support (i.e., provide jobs for) all members of the family.
I suggest that “relative poverty rates”, as a statistic, fall under the economic category.
Certainly you have been intentional, but I would not say race-based discrimination is a feature. If you do convince me to support your renewable reparations, it would be by convincing me that race-based discrimination is a necessary evil.
That is a good point, which I overlooked.
No longer, however. Let’s grab the poverty rates from the Census bureau (2007-2011, margins of error excluded):
Table 1. Population Demographics
Race and Hispanic or Latino origin
Population
Number below poverty
Percent below poverty
White alone
222,007,105
25,659,922
11.6%
Black or African American alone
36,699,584
9,472,583
25.8%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination
4,738,750
1,130,661
23.9%
Subtotal
263,445,439
36,263,166
13.8%
Now let’s ignore all of the other races and assume one out of every ten people under the poverty line apply (and qualify) for a means-tested homestead. That would be…
Table 2. Qualifying Homestead Applications, by Race
Race
Number of Applicants
Percentage of Applicants
White
2,565,922
70.8%
Black
947,258
26.1%
American Indian and/or Alaska Native
113,066
3.1%
Total
3,626,246
100%
Now let’s say we have sixty hundred forty thousand plots to give out (6.4 million acres set aside). By the law of large numbers, and assuming all the qualifying applications are equal, the breakdown of homestead grants should roughly match the percentages of qualifying applications.
Table 3. Homesteads Awarded, by Race
Race
Number of Homesteads Awarded
Percentage of Homesteads Awarded
White
453,120
70.8%
Black
167,040
26.1%
Native American and/or Native Alaskan
19,840
3.1%
Total
640,000
100%
And now, assuming each homestead grant lifts two people of that race out of poverty, we can see what the effect of the program is on the race-relative poverty rates.
Table 4. Effects on Poverty Rates, by Race
Race
Population
Number below poverty, before
Percent below poverty, before
People lifted out of poverty
Number below poverty, after
Percent below poverty, after
Percentage effect on poverty rate
White
222,007,105
25,659,922
11.6%
906,240
24,753,682
11.1%
0.5%
Black
36,699,584
9,472,583
25.8%
334,080
9,138,503
24.9%
0.9%
American Indian and/or Native Alaskan
4,738,750
1,130,661
23.9%
39,680
1,090,981
23.0%
0.8%
Totals
263,445,439
36,263,166
13.8%
1,280,000
34,983,166
13.3%
0.5%
As you can see, a means-tested program is still nearly twice as effective at reducing the poverty rate among Blacks than among whites. The means-tested program works towards addressing the relative lack of wealth and home ownership among descendants of American slaves and American Indians, as opposed to whites, as I claimed it would in post #75.
I am handwaving away these trivial problems in the face of 640 million acres of federal land to choose from.
They can bring their whole family or community and create cooperatives like homesteaders did. DO you think those wagon trains went out west and then split up to the 4 winds? The infrastructure we would provide to other rural communities we should also provide to these communities, even if they are black.
Well, only to the extent a collapsing economy increases deaths. It’s an indirect effect.
I figure about 2.5 million homesteads.
Land $0
Power purchase agreement guarantees $0
Homesteaders can use power purchase agreements to obtain loans to finance the development of their homestead.
Communications infrastructure: Universal Service | Federal Communications Commission
Electricity (presumably they generate their own)
Training and stipend during training I am guessing $100,000/family,
Even if each homestead ends up costing us $1,000,000 to get up and running, it is still only 2.5 trillion dollars. That seems like a bargain to satisfy the debt of slavery.
Yes, the power purchase agreements would lock in prices for some portion of the production for 25 years. The prices the electric company charges are based on what it pays so its not really a financial hardship for the elctric company. If it is a financial hardship for the consumer, we have programs for that.
I am assuming grid parity. Are you saying there aren’t 5 million acres of land where you could achieve grid parity today?
The training we pay for would include a module on picking good homesteads.
Well it’s not unfettered access but if they already have a good idea of which land is good for these uses, then that seems like one problem solved.
I don’t know. Why did a quarter of white families do it when the homesteads were made available to them?
So perhaps the homesteaders could set up near roads and trains too.
If I gave you the opportunity to own 40 acres of and on which I would help you build a solar farm and all you had to do was take a 1 year intensive course on how to run and operate a solar farm with maybe an apprenticeship on a currently operating solar farm, and you were a young poor black family in america, what would you do?
And its something you don’t fix by helping everyone equally. White poverty rates will decline as quickly as the black poverty rates and the relative poverty rates are back where we started. in the meantime we have octupled the size of the program.
It’s a necessary evil because poverty and the legacy of slavery do not fall equally along racial lines.
Relative poverty rates don’t change and you would have increased the program by a factor of 8 to achieve this. As long as relative poverty rates remain static, white people are going to continue to look down on black people. You have to close that gap.
They most certainly did. Look at the last column of table 4. I calculated the poverty rate of whites going down 0.5% while the poverty rate of Blacks went down 0.9% and of American Indians, 0.8%.
Could you explain where you get “a factor of 8”? As far as I can tell, you hadn’t specified how many plots you plan on handing out. I saw mention of 40-acre farms and 10-acre farms, so rather arbitrarily I picked the smaller plots. You also keep mentioning 640 million acres of federally owned land to pick the plots from. I thought to myself, maybe we can find 1% of that federal land for this program, which comes out to 640,000 10-acre plots. I thought I was being generous.
You later posted that you expect to have 2.5 million homesteads, where I had based my calculations off 640,000 homesteads. Do you still think I have increased the program by a factor of 8? I just don’t understand.
History lesson - most homesteaders did NOT make it. Especially in cold climates like the Dakotas or Montana. All over the west are remnants of former towns.
More than a third of this land (223 million acres) is in Alaska, which has very low potential for large-scale solar development because of the remoteness, temperature extremes, and lack of winter sunshine. More than two million acres in New Mexico is part of the White Sands Missile Range; the Nevada Test Site is nearly a million acres, and other bombing ranges, waste dumps, and military sites of varying descriptions encompass more. Yellowstone National Park is another two million acres; Grand Canyon National Park is about 1.2 million. It’s not a trivial problem to identify millions of acres of suitable land; by your own estimates, you’ll need between 25 and 100 million acres to provide 10-40 acre tracts to 2.5 million homesteads. The fact that you think it is a trivial problem shows that you have done no serious thinking about this proposal.
The wagon trains were associated mostly with the Oregon and California Trails (i.e., NOT the Homestead Act). You seem to have a very romanticized notion of the settlement of the American West.
Who’s paying for all of this? A lot of the development of the West was brought about by wealthy easterners, especially railroad men, rather than by the homesteaders themselves, so who is the modern-day equivalent?
Nope, the economy started collapsing because people stayed home in fear of death. That’s a pretty direct effect.
You have allowed no money at all for the cost of roads and especially electrical infrastructure. Electricity, once generated, can’t be loaded onto a train; it has to be fed into the power grid. Where are the suitable grid locations, and who’s paying to get the power there?
As noted above, you need 25 to 100 million acres, not 5 million, and no, I don’t think the US at this point has anything close to 100 million acres of land that can achieve grid parity today. Why do you think differently?
If the electric company can buy power from gas- or coal-fired power plants, hydro plants, wind farms, or newer and more efficient solar installations (the technology will have advanced in 20+ years) at cheaper prices, then compelling them to pay higher prices for your guaranteed solar power might end up being an enormous drain on the economy (NOT just residential customers). What calculations have you made on that effect?
Cite for number? About 1.6 million land patents were issued under the Homestead Acts from 1863 to 1988; even in 1870, there were 7.5 million households in the US.
What would be the point of locating near trains? Passenger service is dead; so is less-than-carload freight. Electricity can’t be loaded onto trains.
What’s in it for me? Will local law enforcement treat me fairly? Will I have access to stores and hospitals? Will my kids have access to local schools? Will my spouse be able to find a job? Will I be able to find a church? Will I end up getting stuck with an unmanageable loan and end up in worse financial predicaments than I am in now? There are a lot of questions that you don’t seem to have thought of yet, much less answered.
The white poverty rate is still 44% of the black poverty rate. That ratio doesn’t change it’s still 44%. and indeed the percentage effect on the poverty rate is also 44%. I think all you are pointing out is that an anti-poverty program affects poorer communities more than more affluent communities.
You are right. you have almost quadrupled the size of the program to accomodate poor whites.
So instead of accepting 620,000 black families, you have accepted 167k black families and 453k white families. That is not going to satisfy the obligations we owe for 400 years of slavery and segregation.
Like I said, there are 640 million acres of federal land.
If this satisfied the debt I would consider it a bargain.
Approximately 4 million claims were made under the Homestead Act. Of these, 1.6 million were successful.
OK so 400 million acres to choose from. I still don’t see the scarcity here.
The federal government.
That is not factual. Small businesses didn’t close because they were afraid of coronavoirus in early march. They were ordered to close.
We are.
Why do you need 100 million acres? How much revenue does 100 million acres of solar panels generate?
None necessary. Electrical tarriffs are regulated, they have monopolies. I am comfortable with their monopoly power being used to address the debt of slavery… The electrical companies have a built in cost in the form of power purchase agreements. As new technology comes out and the black solar farmers upgrade to better panels, they reap more profit. That’s a feature not a flaw.
I was thinking cargo like Xboxes and Hondas. But if all they need is a powerline, to get their product to market, that seems like a trivial expense we can place on the power companies.
a homestead
yes, you will be picking the cops
as much as any other rural community
your spouse will probably be busy maintaining the solar panels or feeding the chickens
you can form a new one
your financial predicament cannot be worse. bankruptcy solves everything. you have nothing to lose.
I’ve answered all of them. I am basically willing to spend whatever the fuck it takes to make up for 400 years of slavery, rape, selling people’s children, beatings, lynchings, segregation etc.
Lets put it the other way. How much would you pay to avoid slavery for your descendants for the next 300 years during which your female descendants will be subject to rape whenever their owners feel like it, their children will be sold off to strangers, they can be murdered by anyone who isn’t white without criminal repercussion and they won’t get to vote for the next 400 years . Then they get rid of all slavery and segregation.
But to make it up to you they will give you preference in college admission for the next 50 years.
We owe, we may not be able to pay but we owe nonetheless. Lets pay a few trillion dollars to satisfy this debt for pennies on the dollar. So what if our economy takes a fucking hit. Savings and loans, bailout. Dot com crash, bailout. mortgage crisis, bailout. coronavirus, bailout. 400 years of slavery, rape, murder, I don’t have my math just right?
And how much, exactly, of that 400 million acres in the lower 48 is usable for your purposes? Mountainsides aren’t. Thickly-forested areas aren’t. Geologically unstable lands aren’t. Lands the military is using aren’t. Lands locked up in national parks and existing oil/mineral/forestry/grazing leases aren’t. Lands far from electrical infrastructure aren’t. Have you actually looked at how much land that leaves?
So the federal government is going to be spending a lot of money on blacks that they did NOT spend on whites, and you think this is going to go over well politically in rural areas that already don’t like giving “handouts” and “welfare” to non-whites?
No, the first lockdowns came AFTER precipitous declines in many hospitality areas. For example, Seattle restaurant bookings had declined by a third at the beginning of March; the lockdown came March 23.
There are close to 10 million black households in the US; you’ve said you want to help a quarter of those. That’s 2.5 million households-cum-homesteads. You’ve bandied about various figures for the size of the homestead at the lower number, 2.5 million homesteads at 10 acres each = 25 million acres. At 40 acres each, that’s 100 million acres. Did you not do this math already?
You’re just now starting to realize the scale of what you’re talking about?
You are comfortable jacking up prices for EVERY consumer of electricity, residential and commercial and industrial?
The specific number for which I request a cite is “a quarter of white families [homesteaded].” That’s not in the NPS student guide.
XBoxes and Hondas? This is becoming farcical. “All they need is a powerline” reflects a ghastly misunderstanding of the technological requirements. This isn’t an ordinary 7200-volt local distribution line we’re talking about; high-voltage transmission lines can easily cost a million bucks a mile. Add in the cost of substations and other equipment, and your “trivial expense” is many billions if not trillions of dollars. You seriously think the power companies will simply shoulder that burden? If they can be compelled to at all (which is doubtful–how much are you allocating for lawsuits?), they’ll simply pass on the cost to their consumers, which will hurt a lot of people (and, not incidentally, reduce political support for this reparations program that is jacking up their electric bills).
How will I be picking the cops? Are you remotely familiar with the history of race relations in the rural West?
I’ll have “as much [access to stores/hospitals/schools] as any other rural community,” but NOT as much as I’d have if I stayed where I was. How much is loss of access to medical care, e.g., going to cost me? Is this just a way to deprive me of the barely-adequate medical care I have now?
feeding the chickens? What century do you think this is?
“your financial predicament cannot be worse. bankruptcy solves everything. you have nothing to lose.” Oh my God, are you seriously this naive? Bankruptcy means I lose this new mortgaged homestead, so now I have no home and no credit worth mentioning, which means I am going to have trouble getting a job, renting an apartment, buying a car, getting insurance for a car, etc., etc., etc. Why don’t you consider this something to lose, something worse than the marginal step on the ladder I’m at now?
“I am basically willing to spend whatever the fuck it takes to make up for 400 years of slavery, rape, selling people’s children, beatings, lynchings, segregation etc.”
Great, wonderful. The problem is that your plan DOESN’T DO THAT. It takes people who are already in a bad situation and potentially sticks them in a much worse situation, just so you can feel good about doing something.
That makes you more intellectually honest than 90% of the posters here.
I don’t know but I only need like 10 million acres, I think. Do you think less than 2.5% of the land is suitable?
The federal government has spent plenty of money on whites. I can try to come up with a tally if you like. I’m not saying that white people will be happy to pay reparations and it may never happen. The only form of reparations whites seem to support is affirmative action at the expense of mostly asians. IOW, they are willing to provide reparations that other people pay for.
Once again, the small businesses did not close out of fear of death. They closed because they were ordered to. A close fri4end has a few restaurants. He didn’t close because he was afraid of dying, business suffered but a 30% reduction in business is preferable to zero business…
He closed because the state ordered him to close. The coronavirus stimulus was meant to allow him to stay in business. It didn’t improve his health.
The stimulus was primarily an economic measure. Can you address how this was not primarily an economic measure?
So we would need 100 million acres if 25% of black families participate and we give them each 40 acres.
I thought we decided that they only need 1 acre of solar panels to have a viable solar farm. And considering your concerns about the availability of land, perhaps we should limit them to 4 acres or so.
So the target number is 10 million acres.
No I am asking you to realize how much money would be generated. But how much does 5-10 million acres of solar panels generate. Well, apparently we only need like 14 million acres to produce enough electricity for our current needs (4 petawatts) if only we could figure out how to store the energy.
There were 60 million people in america in 1890 (including black people) about double what it was in 1862 when the homestead act was first passed. 4 million homesteads with about 4 people per household (this is an assumption) and using fuzzy math I am saying about a quarter of white people benefitted from homesteading. Indeed 93 million of the 250 million white people in america today are the descendants of homesteaders. That’s almost 40%. I feel like giving 25% black people stuff that has benefitted 40% of white people in reparation for 400 years of slavery, rape, murder, violence, segregations, etc. is a bargain and we ought to satisfy this debt while it is still within our power.
I was poking a little fun but physical access through roads and railways is still an important part of building a community.
Yes, I am handwaving away all the costs until you tell me how much I would have to pay you to subject you and your descendants to 400 years of slavery rape and murder. Then tell me if it would be cool if I didn’t pay you because it would disrupt the economy.
Apparently a new 6900 Kv transmission line costs about $285K/mile. It only gets to $1MM a mile if you want to bury the line underground. I don’t think we need to do that.
Were the cops picked by black people in the rural west?
So you think this is all a scheme to derpive black people of helath care? really?
Bankruptcy laws frequently have a homestead exemption. We could extend the homestead exemption to these homesteads. The secured creditors of the solar panels can come and repossess the solar panels. And depending on why there was a bankruptcy (they just can’t run a solar farm or are degenerate gamblers, or (as is the case with a plurality of bankruptcies, there is an unaffordable illness in the family) they can buy new ones. Probably better ones.
I disagree. I think we are giving them a choice.
They started off in a shitty neighborhood with nothing, if it all goes to hell, they can always go back to that shitty neighborhood with nothing. Why were the ancestors of almost 40% of white people able to make it work but black people are all going to fail? They didn’t even get the financial, technological, infrastructure support we are going to give the homesteaders.
What do you think we can do to make this work or are black people hopelessly incapable of running a small business no matter how many resources we throw at them?
I don’t know, but I think that’s something you ought to investigate BEFORE touting this idea.
That’s not what I asked. The federal government does NOT spend much money on putting up stores and hospitals for rural white America today (and they didn’t back in the homesteading days either), so the current residents of the regions into which you are planning to move lots of blacks (people who are mostly white and Trumpist, and regions where Neo-Nazis and other explicitly racist political and religious groups have found fertile ground) will see “those people” getting something they didn’t get. Do you think the neighbors will welcome these newcomers with open arms or with open hostility?
For most restaurants, given the margins they typically have, a 30% reduction in business is a death knell. Your friend’s business may be atypical, but most places can’t stay open long at that rate.
Solar-farm profits per acre are typically between $15k and $45k; how well do you expect somebody to support a family on those sums? Even at the high end, that’s a family income well below the US median; at the bottom end, that’s well below poverty level. Your math doesn’t work.
There weren’t four million homesteads; there were about that many claims, but only 1.6 million actually proved up, with the remainder including many duplicates, cases of fraud, and attempts abandoned as unsuccessful. Why are you counting those as people who benefited?
6900 Kv isn’t even a real size of transmission line; you probably mean 69kV, but that’s a subtransmission size, suitable for distributing power to local substations. You want a size suitable for transmitting lots of power long distances, to the cities and industries that need it, and that costs rather substantially more than you estimate. PG&E, for example, estimates a 230 kV high-voltage line at $2 million + per mile (cite, Excel spreadsheet, lines 123 to 129) in 2018.
No, and that’s kind of the point. The cops in the rural west tend to resemble the other inhabitants of the rural west. The Northwest Territorial Imperative, for example, is an attempt to create an “Aryan ethnostate” in Idaho, Montana, and nearby areas, by “repatriating” nonwhites out of the region. Would you want to be a nonwhite anywhere in the vicinity of any of their followers?
No, but why would blacks trust your scheme? You already acknowledge that the rural west doesn’t have the same kinds of amenities (including health care) as the cities where the people you want to help live now, and that they’ll just have to “deal with it”; how does that inspire trust?
Homestead exemptions are a matter of state law; the feds don’t just get to tell the states to exempt these homesteads. Also, you wrote:
If you have a mortgage, though, then a homestead exemption doesn’t really help you, because your mortgage holder can still seize your house if/when you can’t make the mortgage payments, such as what might happen if your solar farm has unexpectedly high repair costs or lower than expected production and fails to turn a profit.
(Also, if you have a bankruptcy on your record, it is much more difficult and expensive to get a new loan, so how are they going to buy new solar panels to replace the repossessed ones, assuming they managed to keep a place to live in the first place?)
Setting them up to fail, however, isn’t doing them any favors, and it certainly isn’t making up for 400 years of slavery, rape, selling people’s children, beatings, lynchings, segregation, etc. If you want to help make up for that, why don’t you invest money in their shitty neighborhood and existing schools, jobs, homes, etc., instead of plucking them up and sending them far away?
First, you’re going to have to show some evidence that the ancestors of 40% of whites made it work. Most scholars of the Homestead Acts don’t really think they accomplished all that much as a poverty reduction scheme; the programs that made it possible for white American families to buy their own homes in the 1930s and 40s while keeping blacks in rented quarters probably have much more to do with family wealth today.
(Also, pedigree collapse means that saying “the ancestors of almost 40% of white people” isn’t as significant as you make it sound. Saying that I had at least one ancestor who homesteaded isn’t saying that I owe my present position in any way to that ancestor, as opposed to the others who didn’t.)
I haven’t prepared a white paper or anything. This is just a proposal. Feel free to improve on it. But limit the cost to what you would have the country pay to avoid 400 years of slavery, rape and segregation for you and your descendants.
Who gives a shit what the racists think. Give the black folks guns and familiarize them with the castle doctrine. When those redneck racists need medical care and have to go to the black hospital or die, maybe they will change their tune. Heck maybe we can turn wyoming blue.
No it was a slow and steady march to the grave for his restaurants too but they stopped paying rent and that made it possible to make ends meet.
Per acre, yes. But we’re talking about 10 acre farms with 2.5 acres of solar panels (with room to grow) aren’t we? That’s 37.5k to 112.5k per year. Hrmm, maybe we should only be giving them 1.5 acres of solar panels… nah lets give them enough to be middle class in a generation.
The bottom quintile of black families in america make less than $15k/year
The next quintile makes between 15K and 25K
The middle quintile makes between 25K and 50K
The median income for black families is 41K
I’m getting concerned that we will be attracting middle class black families and not just the poor ones. Well, some fine tuning will be necessary to balance the policy concerns.
Why does it matter how many were successful, we are talking about how many were granted. Hopefully we can formulate support programs to improve the success rate.
I am counting anyone that got a shot as having benefited. Once again 40% of the white people in this country are descended from homesteaders. I think we can go out on a limb as say they didn’t get enslaved and raped for 400 years.
You’re right I was talking about the wrong type of line.
then we should hire these guys who will do it for half that.
Costs
An underground 230 kV line costs 10 to 15 times the cost of an
overhead line due to time, materials, processes, the need to include
transition substations and the use of specialized labor. The proposed
overhead double circuit 230 kV line would cost $1 million per mile.
Part of the added cost to bury lines may include routing and boring
to avoid other underground installations, such as water, natural gas
and sewer lines. An overhead line often can be routed around or
over these difficult areas.
It also seems clear that you don’t need one of these lines going to every solar farm. If you can get a cluster of solar farms, you can build a local substation and send the electricity on its merry way. But we should have some sort of budget. How much do you figure you would pay to avoid 400 years of slavery, rape and murder for you and your descendants?
I’m not white. I’ve been to these places for work. It’s really fucking white up there. I’d gear up the new police force with all the paramilitary shit we give to the police in Minneapolis. For a better way of life, I bet people would go.
Those who are looking for an easy comfortable poverty need not apply. The going will get tough so if it dissuades the easily discouraged, that seems like a feature not a flaw.
The federal government has plenary jurisdiction regarding bankruptcies. Article 1, section 8, clause 4 authorizes congress to enact "uniform Laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the united states.
Bankruptcies have almost no effect on secured loans except that now you have no more liabilities. So you buy newer better solar panels after the creditors help you get rid of the old ones.
Your mortgageholder can seize your house but not the land. Your mortgageholder is still relying on the power purchase agreement.
Because democrats have been trying to do that for fucking decades and all that happens is the money still magically ends up in white neighborhoods.
Well shit I know for a fact none of my ancestors were homesteaders. If you don’t like the homesteading idea, what is your idea for making this right, because right now all we have is some bullshit affirmative action that is mostly being paid to blacks, (and for some reason hispanics) at the expense of asians. No skin off the white man’s nose.
The people you are planning to move there care what the neighbors think, because those neighbors are the people who staff the local courthouse and utilities and grocery stores and, yes, hospitals. (That “black” hospital is highly likely to be staffed by whites, after all, unless you are planning a simultaneous program to train black medical professionals and move them to the region.)
One-third of black men in this country cannot legally have a gun in their home because of a prior felony conviction; given the current state of US law enforcement, it’s not necessarily a great idea for the remainder to be seen toting one around. If you can’t rely on local cops to protect you, though, then maybe it’s not a great place to raise your family.
Then you still need 25 million acres suitable for habitation, which means areas that are too wet, too steep, too remote, etc., are still right out.
Of course you will; I thought that was understood. The original Homestead Acts didn’t attract the very poor either, because it took money to set up a farm even if the land was free. The poorest black households are disproportionately likely to be headed by someone elderly, disabled, or a female single parent; those aren’t groups that have ever been likely to strike out for the frontier.
Around 1.6 million land patents were granted. Why would you count fraudulent claims as having benefited someone, e.g., when there might not even have been a real someone filing the claim in the first place? And somebody who was bankrupted and had to abandon a claim “benefited” even if they were left worse off? I fail to follow your logic.
Different states, different states, different prices. (Colorado vs California, 2014 vs 2018. Your quote also says “the proposed” line; are they talking about a specific proposal, and if so, how do the conditions for that project compare?) Both sets of prices, however, support my contentions and not yours. At the very least, you’ll need thousands of miles of 138+kV and probably tens of thousands of miles to subtransmission lines, costing many billions of dollars, and I’m not sure of the point of hand-waving those expenses away as something to be borne by the utilities.
What “new police force”? That’s the first time you’ve mentioned it.
I presume you want to recruit intelligent people, and intelligent people consider all of the pros AND cons of a major life move. Blacks in America already tend to receive substandard medical care; moving to an area where the care is likely to be even worse might dissuade a lot of stalwart souls, because a chance at a better life is meaningless if you (or a family member) aren’t in fact alive anymore.
The federal courts have long recognized that property interests are a matter of state law, and that the uniformity clause does not require that property interests in a bankrupt’s estate be administered uniformly across the United States. There are states today that have “opted out” of federal bankruptcy exemptions and do not allow debtors in those states to use existing federal exemptions; despite the opinions of various legal scholars, SCOTUS has declined to overturn those laws in four decades of trying.
This doesn’t even make sense. For starters, if they seize the house, then you’re homeless. Secondly, what mortgageholder is going to loan you money for a house without an underlying security interest in the property on which it sits?
I intend to build state of the art teaching hospitals right next to each of these homesteads to attract non-racist doctors. The black communities will have their own courthouses and grocery stores like a PX. I intend to couple this plan with a program to pardon all non-violent black felons that homestead. And if you are a violent felon then your wife is probably going to have to be the one that owns the gun.
Seriously tho, I get it. Its just a program I thought of off the top of my head. I don’t have the details but for the sake of argument, lets assume all your practical concerns are overcome. Do you have a problem with the rest of the proposal?
No, the reason for the shutdown was directly to limit deaths. The need for economic assistance was because of the shutdown causing massive financial crisis to everyone affected by the shutdown (i.e. everybody). Businesses going under to never resurface, small business owners to lose everything, banks foreclosing on properties because nobody can pay only to have property they can’t sell or lend because nobody can pay, millions of homeless because their homes were foreclosed on or they couldn’t pay their rent - during a pandemic -, everyone losing their health insurance for failure to pay premiums and because most people’s insurance is through their job - DURING A PANDEMIC -, all of that is why we needed and still need to help out people during the economic slowdown caused by restrictions because of the need to reduce the infection rate and thereby reduce DEATHS.
A 1 year intensive course with apprenticeship to learn a trade, if being paid at the time, doesn’t sound so bad. Being able to acquire at the end of it property and a business with guaranteed market doesn’t sound so bad. Having to uproot and move to the middle of Arizona or Nevada or New Mexico to the scrubland desert, away from my community and extended family, to strike out on a risky new endeavor doesn’t sound quite as appealing, but I did move away from home and my family and strike out on my own, so it’s not a no-go. It’s the scrubland desert, building a whole new community in the middle of nowhere, and risky endeavor part that is off-putting.
Plus, what’s the alternative? Do they know what better than what they currently have even looks like? Something they can actually achieve.
And then there’s the part where you tell them that this is to pay off everyone for slavery - congrats, now we’re even. Hmmmm, sounds like a bit of an insult. “Your ancestors were kidnapped and forced over here to forced labor, so we’re going to give you reparations by requiring you to work - in a designated field no less,” sounds a bit … ironic?