Shocker: Albany is punting on a report from the state’s reparations commission — pushing off its deadline to 2029, four years after the original due date.
That follows a one-year extension granted in 2024, which of course already expired.
Typical: Lawmakers clearly realize (but don’t dare admit) the idea is utterly nuts — and not likely to ever result in significant state payments for America’s sin of slavery.
Most likely, they’re hoping everyone just forgets about it.
Maybe some want to drag out the process, so they can posture as long as possible, pretending to fight for justice.
The idea of reparations today for slavery (which was outlawed in New York by 1827, two centuries ago next year) would be comical if it weren’t so corrosive.
For starters, any broad-based payment plan based on race would be unconstitutionally discriminatory, as the Justice Department is now arguing in a case against an Evanston, Ill., program to pay blacks for housing discrimination.
Yet narrowly ID’ing slaves’ descendants is equally fraught.
Meanwhile, payments funded with taxpayer dollars would penalize everyone who arrived in New York long after slavery ended and their descendants.
Should a Korean or Ukrainian who arrived last year have to pay for pre-1827 slavery — which involved victims and victimizers all long dead?
Nor does the reparations lobby have anything to say about the 50,000 or so New York lives lost in the war to abolish slavery.
Above all: The state’s broke, facing a $32 billion cash shortfall through 2030; it has no cash to fork over for reparations payments of any kind, let alone the huge sums some surely imagine.
Consider: Preliminary estimates of California’s reparations plan topped $800 billion; that’s why uber-progressive Gov. Gavin Newsom dropped it like a hot potato, dashing hopes and fueling anger.
And why not one of the candidates to replace him has picked it up.
Want to help minorities? Fix the public schools so many must attend; crack down on crime, which hurts them disproportionately.
Make more jobs available by lowering taxes to boost the economy.
In the meantime, stop inflating hopes of free money for blacks and dividing New Yorkers along racial lines.
This charade won’t end well — and the sooner lawmakers admit it, the less damage they’ll cause.
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