I have a sincere question for Honesty. Suppose it were discovered one of your ancestors committed a serious crime. For the sake of argument, let’s say your great-great-grandmother murdered someone in cold blood. (For the record, I am certainly not accusing Honesty’s great-great-grandmother of murder, this is purely hypothetical.) Do you think you and your family members should be held liable and forced to pay the descendents of the victim? Why or why not?
In what alternative reality do you believe this happened?
Which leaves my question unaddressed. Let’s pretend for a minute that all this nonsense about resurgent racism has some connection with reality. If that were true, why on earth would you expect us to give you a dime?
Now we have to pay gay people reparations? This is going to get pricey.
Unsurprisingly, this also makes no sense. The fact that they abolished these laws is evidence that they really support them?
And I think the whole notion is paranoid nonsense.
And by the bye, could you please cite those programs that help the poor, that have been cut? Or don’t you do debate anymore?
Regards,
Shodan
Sure, this nightmare began on a cold winter of 1981 on the steps of the Capitol. There, the Devil Himself took the oath of office and began his rule of tyranny with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation At of 1981. The New York Times wrote about it here.
[QUOTE=New York Times, 1981]
Conversion of $1.1 billion in Food Stamps now paid in Puerto Rico to a $900 million block grant. Limitation of assistance to pregnant and lactating women and infants to those who have very low incomes and exhibit nutrition deficiencies, spending $200 million less than the $900 million now being spent
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=New York Times, 1981]
Elimination of the automatic $255 payment now awarded upon the death of an insured worker, unless there is a spouse or surving minor child to receive the benefit, saving $200 million from what would otherwise be spent in fiscal year 1982.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=New York Times, 1981]
Consolidation of a variety of separate youth and adult employment training programs into a single block grant. Reduction of total spending by $700 million in the fiscal year 1982. Placing of summer youth jobs program under the block grant by summer of 1983. Abolition of Young Adult Conservation Corps by the end of 1982 and of Youth Conservation Corps by the end of this year. Reduction of spending for state employment services by $150 million. Additional reduction: $857 million below the $5.5 billion employment and training budget proposed by Reagan Administration last month.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=New York Times, 1981]
Cuts, large and small, in water projects in 20 states, including such major cuts as stoppage of all work on Yatesville Lake dam in Kentucky, saving $6.9 million; reduction of spending on Big South Fork National River and Recreation area in Kentucky and Tennessee from $26.9 million to $9.9 million; reduction of spending on Red River Waterway in Louisiana to $27.4 million from $120 million; a $10 million cut in spending from Central Valley Project in California; $7.4 million from Yuma Desalting Complex in California, and $5 million from Central Arizona Project and $4 million from Central Utah Project, to be achieved by extending deadline for completion. Other sizable reductions: a $2.9 million cut, to $201.1 million, in the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway project; a cut from $14 million to $11.9 million in Kentucky’s Taylorsville Lake project; a $2 million cut, to $15.5 million, in Alaska’s Chena River Lakes project; a cut to $14.5 million from $19.7 million in Missouri’s Harry S. Truman Dam; a cut to $2.94 million from $6.24 million in North Carolina’s B. Everett Jordan Dam and a cut to $11.5 million from $14.6 million in the state’s Falls Lake Dam, and a cut to $10.3 million from $12.8 million in additional units for Washington’s Chief Joseph Dam. Other water-related cuts: a $57 million cut in survey, operations and maintenance activities and an $8 million cut in salaries for the Army Corps of Engineers; elimination of funds for the Office of Water Research and Technology in the Department of Interior, saving $66.7 million, and elimination of funds for the Water Resources Council, saving $44.8 million.
[/QUOTE]
It goes on and on, read the article. Still not convinced that there were cuts to education, science, arts, infrastructure, food stamps, or welfare? In 1986, Reagan’s new budget was evaluated by the New York Times.
The Devil was still not sated and devoured the federal revenue sharing programwhich had since its inception distributed “$4.5 billion to 39,000 municipalities” causing those cities to lay off city workers. God forbid U.S money is used to help U.S cities and its own citizens. This is the hypocrisy the Republican party that burns me to no end; punk cowards would rather give billions of dollars to these non-US territories and non-US citizens but won’t a lift a damn finger to people the living within their own territory. It’s borderline seditious, IMO.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
Now we have to pay gay people reparations? This is going to get pricey.
[/QUOTE]
I used the example to show that even in 2014 the states cannot be trusted to equally protect the rights of all of their citizens.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
In what alternative reality do you believe this happened?
[/QUOTE]
This one. The government even has a bureau to make their Indians are OK. What’s good for the goose ought to be good for the gander.
[QUOTE=Garula]
I have a sincere question for Honesty. Suppose it were discovered one of your ancestors committed a serious crime. For the sake of argument, let’s say your great-great-grandmother murdered someone in cold blood. (For the record, I am certainly not accusing Honesty’s great-great-grandmother of murder, this is purely hypothetical.) Do you think you and your family members should be held liable and forced to pay the descendents of the victim? Why or why not?
[/QUOTE]
In this hypothetical, I personally don’t think they should be held liable. However, I do not believe people are like governments. Governments are timeless institutions while people are ephemeral. The actions (or, in this case, *mostly *inaction) by governments can lead to long-standing disparities that’s resistant to change among people. When a people have been wronged in such a way, a debt is owed and should be repaid. IMO, Affirmative Action, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act would have been an imperfect but agreeable compromise to reparations. However, given that a large slice of population finds these programs to be an egregious overstep of federal powers and have decided to send anti-government representatives to highest echelons of government (“coincidentally” on Obama’s watch), I am on the side reparations. Enough is enough.
- Honesty
Oops.
[QUOTE=New York Times, 1986]
Federal loans to build rental housing for the elderly and handicapped, which total $490 million this year, would decline to $385 million next year and to $74 million in 1991.
Federal spending for training and employment programs, $5.2 billion this year, would be reduced to $4.5 billion next year and $4.3 billion in 1991.
Spending on child nutrition programs would be cut by $704 million next year, leaving $5.8 billion. That would rise gradually to $7 billion in 1991.
Spending for the main welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and the child-support enforcement program, would decline from $9.7 billion this year to $8.9 billion next year. It would rise gradually to $10.4 billion 1991. Mr. Reagan is again proposing what he calls ‘‘a strong but flexible work requirement’’ for welfare recipients.
Spending on subsidized housing, now projected at $10.6 billion, would be reduced to $9.9 billion this year and to $8.9 billion next year. It would rise to $10.6 billion in 1991.
The budget drops an earlier proposal to sell the Federal Housing Administration to private investors. Instead, the President proposes to increase premiums charged by the agency for mortgage insurance. These premiums would reduce the deficit by roughly $2 billion a year from 1987 through 1991.
The community development block grant program, which is providing $3.6 billion of Federal aid to cities and counties this year, would be cut to $3.1 billion next year and to $2.9 billion in 1991.
[/QUOTE]
Honesty, if you’re going to bring up Native Americans please do some actual research before making such an absurd statement that would make most black people throw up.
Beyond that, I’m a bit confused by your claim that you’ll refuse to answer my question about what you think of Farrakhan’s claims that Jews are “bloodsuckers” who are “sucking the lifeblood from the black community” and that they “killed Jesus” by claiming that you’re not going to discuss Israel or the Middle East.
What do anti-Semitic comments the man you endorse has made about American Jews and the Jews who supposedly killed Jesus have to do with Israel?
You don’t conflate American Jews and Israel do you?
Would you at least agree that it’s anti-Semitic bullshit to claim American Jews are “bloodsuckers” who “suck the lifeblood from the black community”?
Those were not reparations for pain inflicted on Indian people. They were a specific case that money already set aside by Congress for the management of lands that the U.S. had a treaty obligation to manage had been mis-managed. The people who will receive the distributions are the same people who were cheated by mis-management, not their descendants.
If you can provide evidence that the Freedman’s Bureau mismanaged funds allocated for its services, then those people who were cheated by the Freedman’s Bureau might have a case with a remote chance that their descendants would be able to cash in on that settlement.
Otherwise, your comparison is baseless.
Nah, American Jews and Israeli Jews are different. One stood side-by-side with African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement and the other provided financial and technical expertise to apartheid South Africa and continues to expunge East African migrants from their own lands.
Yes, in that context.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Those were not reparations for pain inflicted on Indian people. They were a specific case that money already set aside by Congress for the management of lands that the U.S. had a treaty obligation to manage had been mis-managed. The people who will receive the distributions are the same people who were cheated by mis-management, not their descendants.
If you can provide evidence that the Freedman’s Bureau mismanaged funds allocated for its services, then those people who were cheated by the Freedman’s Bureau might have a case with a remote chance that their descendants would be able to cash in on that settlement.
Otherwise, your comparison is baseless.
[/QUOTE]
The Native Americans got a sovereign nation, a piece of real estate, and a federal bureau whose mission is to “enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes and Alaska Natives.” Blacks deserve a similar Bureau with a similar mandate. What’s good for the goose is good ought to be good for the gander.
- Honesty
To this point, white Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights Movement were predominately American Jews.
- Honesty
I should have asked if you do honest debate. Social spending by the federal government has been increasing, not decreasing. So even your mendacious figures from thirty years ago are irrelevant.
And can you please answer my question? If white people hate you so much, why would we give you money?
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t think that expression means what you think it means.
tbf, that was Abraham Lincoln’s idea.
Ummm . . . has this moved to you proposing Black reservations? That is possibly more racist then the pay the blacks to leave idea.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the reservations in the Four Corners area and I think if anything we should abolish the reservations. the squalid conditions that have developed out on the Navajo, with 30% of the population not having running water and the crops being left to rot in the field when they are only paid to grow crops and not harvest them it hard to be around. Some tribes are very nice, the Southern Utes for one, Even up around Flathead lake in Montana they are serious centers of poverty.
While I think you’ll drum up more support for creating 27,000 sqmiles of terrible conditions to forcibly move all of the black people to, that doesn’t sound like a net win. It’s probably only doable in States larger than 100 sqmiles so that’ll limit you to Colorado or the seven larger states. Of course if they are giving up that kind of land and hate Black people as much as you think I’d guess that Colorado is the only one that wouldn’t stick it out in a God forsaken desert so instead you be up in the mountains. That one might not be so bad.
All in all a terrible idea though.
Good point. Honesty doesn’t appreciate just how bad living conditions are for many Native Americans. On the whole, black Americans are significantly more prosperous and have considerably more political power.
Whatever, still goal posting as usual, you asked for me specify cuts to programs to the poor. I did so. Now you’re upset with the time-frame :rolleyes:. To recap, from 1981 to 1987, Reagan cut the Food Stamp Program by $3 billion, AFDC by $1 billion, and over $10 billion dollars to Medicare and Medicaid. From 1981 to 1986, Reagan shrank funding of education training, employment, and social services from nearly 5% to GDP to less than 2% GDP (cite). All the while, under Reagan’s reign, foreign aid to non-US countries skyrocketed from 1981 to 1986 (cite, See Figure 4). In other words, the Devil was took from the poorest of Americans and gave it away as free money to non-US citizens in non-US countries as well as was using the savings of these social programs to fund tax breaks to the rich.
The enactment of these policies is in my view nothing more than economic warfare against the poor and coupled with the ongoing War on Drugs, Reagan made it clear what side of tracks he was targeting. Think about it. Why is a Reagan considered a hero? This was a man who left office with more debt than of his previous predecessors - combined. This was peacetime debt, the kind of insidious debt that white dude George Washington warned you about. Reagan is a hero because he made it clear - via winks and nods of course - that he was not going to support the blacks or any other minorities.
Case-in-point: In the 80’s, there was an epidemic of HIV that ravaged the country and primary affected gay men. What did the Devil do? He cut NIH and CDC funding by millions of dollars (cite 1, 2, and 3). Who the fuck does that except a monster? Now you’re very correct to say that some of funding was later restored but how many scientists did not get tenure because of these cuts? How many outstanding graduate students were turned away because of these cuts? How many potential cures or discoveries were lost or delayed because of these cuts? It makes no sense to cut scientific research and CDC funding when you’re dealing with epidemic. He didn’t lift a finger because he wasn’t going to help what he perceived to be a minority (gay) disease. Maybe - just maybe - if Reagan confronted the issue and poured money into research - like we’re doing with autism or Alzheimer’s disease (I wonder what’s the difference: maybe it’s a white disease?) - maybe we’d a bit closer to a cure or treatment in the present.
Social spending only rose in the last few years out of necessity of the economic crisis. Much of the safety net that was degraded in the 1980’s was never reinstated. For example, how many of those projects that weren’t funded in the 1980’s got canceled and never built? When eligibility guidelines were tightened in the 80’s, were they later loosened back in the 90’s to Present? Were the grant cuts to the Youth Conservation Corps or other youth program reversed by a later administration? My point is that these cuts are self-perpetuating and acts as a suppressor to keep social spending from being efficient. There’s no reason why poor American needs to go to a food pantry to get cereal when there was a program in the 80’s that provided direct food assistance.
I am talking about the U.S government providing these benefits not “white people”. What I think you’re suggesting is that if we’re unhappy we should just leave. The problem is you can’t drag a people thousands of miles from their home, strip them of their culture and language, and say, “Ok, here’s a knapsack and a stick to tie to, good luck!”. You need to provide a fair way to ensure that blacks are able to migrate to another non-US territory and live out their lives in peace. There is also a debt owed that must be repaid.
Many white people have taken to the streets, holding up banners and crying out that they want their “country back”. This is nothing but undercover white-speak for “a nigger is in the White House and I am quite distressed about it” or “niggers are voting and I am quite distressed about it”. The reparation program allows white people to have their country back. No longer will whites have to worry about Big Government burdening the American people with the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Right Act, or Affirmative Action. Once we’re gone, the electorate can finally get have that Norman Rockwell fantasy that they’ve wished for all along.
- Honesty
The majority of white people (and a huge majority of Americans overall) do not support this, do not want this, and would oppose this.
Honesty, do you still think China and Russia would accept large numbers of emigrants and, if they did, that those would be great countries to emigrate to?
Let’s say that you cite was appropriate. If your premise is that cutting programs for the poor is proof of Blacks being shortchanged, how do explain the fact that there are many more poor White people affected by those cuts?
Here’s the real problem as I see it…
Even if we agreed and did as Honesty proposes, the following generations will simply make additional demands. The children of those relocated people will demand to be repatriated and given a lifelong pension in reparation for the heinous act of tricking their parents into leaving the only home they ever knew.
After all, why shouldn’t they get paid as well? What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander, right? Likewise their children as well should be taken care of.
The point is it never ends. You can’t pretend to speak for all unborn generations, take reparations for yourself and then tell your grandchildren ”sorry you missed out”, and unfortunately we can’t make reparations forever.
It would be nice if we could just write a check and get the whole issue of race behind us as a society but that’s just not how the world works. The only practical thing we can do is to invest in things like education to do what we can to give our children, all our children, as good a chance of being successful as possible.
Of course this is just my opinion…
It’s more than that. It’s the only sensible course of action. Because, you see, your opinion agrees with my opinion.