Can of Worms

[phuloi]

Slave reparations are damage, not repair

The state of California may be on the verge of getting in the slave reparations business. Thank Sacramento legislators who in 2000, with little fanfare or media coverage, passed two bills, signed by Gov. Gray Davis. These bills could lead to requirements that companies doing business in California pay reparations for slavery, if they or parent companies ever benefited from slavery.

At a San Francisco Chronicle editorial board meeting on Tuesday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said that the bills also could lead to reparations for Chinese Americans, because their "coolie" ancestors helped build America's railroads, as well as for Mexican Americans. Indeed, one of the bills required the state Department of Insurance to collect data on insurers' past slave policies, and one insurer responded by submitting data on "coolie" policies. On May 1, Insurance Commissioner Harry Low is set to release his findings. Next, as mandated in the companion bill, a University of California panel is expected to put a dollar figure on various parties' "economic benefits" from the slave trade.

Last month, New Jersey attorney Edward Fagan filed a lawsuit for a handful of African Americans against three corporations -- including Aetna -- because it admitted to issuing a small number of slave policies. Hence it is now clear the two bills essentially would force insurers to release information that invites people -- people whom they have never affected -- to sue them.

Which no doubt is part of the reason so few insurers -- eight out of some 1,300, according to Insurance Commissioner Harry Low -- have submitted data. And successful court challenges to a similar law requiring disclosure of Holocaust-related profits have emboldened them.

The second bill mandates a UC panel to put a figure on "the economic benefits of slavery" -- an endeavor in which advocates have been creative. Fagan's brief argued that "many American industries" profited from the cheap price of cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco and other slave-produced products -- to the tune of $1.4 trillion in today's dollars. Get it: Every major industry could be liable.

"Clearly, we want to right any wrongs and do justice to people who were taken advantage of," Davis said last week. (Just one problem, guv. The very wronged people are dead -- and most have been dead for more than a century.)

This could be a thorny issue for Davis in his re-election. A 2001 Fox News poll found that 81 percent of registered voters oppose the U.S. government paying African Americans reparations. (Lucky for Davis, GOP challenger Bill Simon doesn't see this as a campaign issue. Simon spokesman James Fisfis told me, "That's something we probably would not comment on.")

It's not clear that Davis will retain African American votes with his position. Both Fagan and Jackson support reparations not for known slave ancestors, but for nonprofit groups that promote the victim group's interests. As Jackson told the Chronicle, "It will not be, 'Rowena, pick up your check at the register.'" A 1999 Harvard poll found that 53 percent of African Americans supported government reparations. Will that number hold when individuals find out that groups such as the Rainbow Coalition get the money -- and they don't?

Ward Connerly, who sponsored Proposition 209, which ended racial and gender preferences in state hiring and admissions, noted that once the courts accept the idea that parties can receive compensation for injuries that happened to dead people, every victim group will have a claim. "If that reasoning is accepted, there is no end to the damage that it could do to our economy."

Worse would be the damage to the American psyche. It would pay for every American to be a victim.
Debra Saunders

[sn-e3]

Jesse jackson the self proclaimed champion of the oppressed is at it again i notice that if they win its not the people of color who would benifet its organizations like his rainbow coaliition these assinign lawsuits have to be stopped and when they are filled there ought to be a bond issued by the plantif equal to the amount sued for then see how many bogus law suets come up it all about money and greed

[Seascamp]

A can of worms for sure but much more perhaps. It?s likely Tom Hayden and Gary Davis have sown the wind and the people of California will reap the legal costs of the whirlwind for years and years to come. As this issue heats up, some very thorny legal questions will have to be addressed. The first being a legal and supportable definition of ?profiting from slavery? needs to be hammered out. If too narrow and only targets one industry, rest assured that target industry is going to scream bloody murder, demand due process, equal protection under the law and cite discrimination. If too broad, that will include any Northern or non-US industry that traded with the anti bellum/pre Civil War South. And that would include many, many big name US organizations and many non-US organizations that still exist today. That surely will tie up the State and Federal courts for the remainder of the century.

Here is an interesting one. A Connecticut manufacturer of men?s fancy linen shirts gets the cotton textile feedstock from the rural pre Civil War South. This shirt manufacturing company gets into the arms manufacturing business and becomes the Winchester repeating arms company (real story). Of course, Colt, Smith & Wesson and Winchester sold arms to slave owners prior to the Civil War. What is that to be called and are they signed up? Is this profiting from slavery?

Here is a probable. The early ancestor of General Motors made horse carriages and farm utility wagons. What if they sold a carriage or utility wagon to a salve owner, what then?

For sure, every linear inch of railway in the South came from Northern steel mills and nearly every locomotive that ran in the South came from the Baldwin works in Lester, PA. Who gets signed up for that?

Did the then US Federal Government ever collect taxes based on exports from or imports to the pre Civil War South? If so, was that not profiting from slavery and where do ya go from there? What about still existing Federal facilities that were built by slave labor, where do they fit in? Ft. Sumter for example.

At least for me, these questions are rather interesting to contemplate.

A second thorny issue is the question of if contemporary organizations can be held liable for the legal conduct of parent organizations 150 years ago. Moral and legal may or may not be the same so that is a sticky question. I wouldn?t want to see the court system retrofit contemporary law and morality into situations of 150 years ago and come up with some punitive award and/or judgment. ?Found guilty of legally conducting business 150 years ago and therefore liable? doesn?t sound right to me and would seem to make a mockery of due process.

Then the last question of exactly who should receive reparations if and when a punitive judgment is rendered is even bigger and will tie up the courts even more. No doubt attorneys and organizations like the Rainbow Coalition will be the first in line at the payday window and there will be little or nothing left for the allegedly aggrieved individuals. So court battles as to who should be first at the payday window will come with the territory and that will get, mighty, mighty ugly for sure. The question as to who does and who does not represents the common good will have to be hammered out and I don?t see the ?non-profits? winning that battle.
Fair seas, Bill

[Andy]

After the 13 Amendment was passed the textile mills in the Northeast were running full boar. Well into the 20th century these factories wanted nimble little fingers to pull out the tangles and clean the machines. Child labor, and I?m talking about 6 year olds was very common. Kids loosing fingers, hands, arms and even their lives was not uncommon. The work day was usually 10 to 12 hours. The work was 6 days a week and the pay guaranteed the workers would ?owe their soul to the company store?. These mills were voluntary slavery. You could volunteer to work or you could starve. The factories of New England were owned by the English, a few were Jewish owned but the people who worked there were mostly Irish, French, Italian and Polish.

To give reparations only to Blacks, Hispanic and Chinese is frivolous, capricious, and discriminatory. Then there is the issue of coal mines and their children who worked in unsafe conditions, for little pay and had a short life spans. There are, of course, many other examples of un-safe working conditions, child labor, and women who were seduced, even raped as a condition of employment.

If our nation is going to pay everyone who?s family got screwed over, which is only fair if we are going to take that path, we?ll need to take money from 100% of the people so we can pay it back to at least 85% of the people. This sort of re-distribution of wealth is an idea found in a couple of books written by a guy named Karl Marx. Nonsense.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[Keith_Hixson]

About 1880 there was a little town called Roslyn, WA. It had some major coal mines. Those who worked the coal mines were East European Immigrants and Blacks. There were many mine disasters. I don't know how many were killed in mine accidents but it was a lot. They were slaves just trying to make a go of it in the New World. Kids as young as 12 worked those mines.

Keith

[phuloi]

I`m glad to see that I`m not alone in seeing the obvious Marxist connection..

[frisco-kid]

this is all nonsense. And Griz, you're right about Davis possibly shooting himself in the foot with this. I'm a registered Democrat and, as of a couple of years ago, can vote outside of my party. I know several Dems taking a closer look at Simon, myself included.

The crux of the beef with the insurance companies is that they insured specific named slaves lives, but paid the slave owners at the time of death, even after the end of slavery. Well DUH! Who was paying the premiums? Sadly, many times black family were so broken up and splintered, they couldn't locate other beneficiaries if they wanted to. Especially after the war.

As has already been stated, this is going to open the door to almost every ethnic group in the country. Through the previous centuries, and well into the 20th century, unless you were Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, you were pretty much exploited and definately discriminated against. Not many returned to their native lands because of it, because it was still better than what they left behind. Not saying it was right, just saying it was a fact of the times.

These reparations are being aimed at big business, and that's exactly why I don't believe it's going to get very far. Big business has too many in-roads into our governments at all levels to let laws be passed that is going to allow alot of reaching into their pockets. And if it does happen, the losses will be passed on to the consumer [us], and that won't be stood for too long. Some of my thoughts. Time will tell.

P.S. Griz, if the Chinese score because of building the RR, they'll be cutting us a check, since the Irish built it from the East.

[Arrow]

we will have to pay them a bunch of money for doing their chores..and how about your old lady and your ex's if you got them. Now there is can of worms.

I got a question don't these people that sit around and think up this bs have anything better to do?