Dear Congressman Rush What About Reparations.

I am one of your constituents of the 1st Congressional District. I was your neighbor in Bronzeville. I remember well your days with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panthers. You were a firebrand and I mean that in a very positive way.

It is said that age mellows us. You may well be an example. You decided on politics, working within the system. Now I, and many of your constituents, am asking you to work within that system to right a terrible wrong.

Historically slavery lasted from 1619 to 1865. Reconstruction, as it has been labeled lasted from 1865 to 1870. But who benefitted from the Reconstruction? Whites were paid for the loss of their property, the slaves. Even though General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No.15 which called for the setting aside of land along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts for newly liberated slaves few were able to take advantage of the promised 40 acres and the promised loan of army mules. Newly elected President Andrew Johnson repealed the order and whites reclaimed the property. Of course you are aware of all of this.

In a newly published article 40 Acres and a Mule Would be at Least 64Trillion Today (http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/make-it-right/infographic-40-acres-and-a-mule-would-be-at-least-64-trillion-today) the economic impact of slavery is well outlined. Perhaps you had not thought of slavery in this exact way or maybe you have.

I distinctly recall the objections to not only why reparations should be paid but how could we even prove we were eligible? Now DNA and gene studies can answer that question. So what now?

Why now? Why us? Alfred L. Brophy has written recently about the “cultural war”

over slavery reparations; he cites polls that indicate approximately 70% of blacks and

5% of whites in Alabama support reparations. The divide is less severe nationally, but

still it is significant, bearing witness to the very legacy we are discussing. It is my sense

that a closer look at human rights law is needed to provide the political will and the legal

framework for realistically resolving the concerns of the unconvinced and to heal the soul

of a conflicted nation. By Michael F. Blevins, J.D., M. Div., L.L.M.-IHR (2005)3 St. Thomas University School of Law ©May 9, 2005

The question now should be how do we make reparations, not if. That is a job for you and other black legislators and concerned others who know this wrong needs to be made right. Perhaps start by taxing the rich appropriately, fight Citizens United. Provide tax deductions for African Americans. I don’t know the answer but I do know many of us elected people we thought would find an answer and work to make it so!

In a newly published article 40 Acres and a Mule

That term must be appealing because it sounds a bit lyrical and easily grasped because it is finite. But it is apocryphal. But it wouldn't be the first time leftists have attempted to claim fantasy as fact.

The question now should be how do we make reparations, not if.

An excellent question! We've paid out trillions to descendants of slaves with risibly lax criteria for eligibility. What do we have to show for it?

Drugs sold and used on a widespread scale. Alcoholism. Violence and vandalism. Illegitimate births on a cosmic scale. Our major cities have become no-go zones with police characterized as the problem by so-called black leaders.

Out of human decency we promise no person will be turned away from emergency rooms and soon the rooms are treated like family doctors' offices with no prospect of receiving payment for services and forcing those with actual emergencies to wait hours for treatment.

We build housing units and offer miniscule rents (e.g. $80/month). We even have an agency that parachutes you into safer, more desirable suburbs and puts you in a house or a condo. In both cases you trash the property within months and annoy your neighbors.

Insurance premiums continue to climb as vehicle break-ins and home/business burglaries continue apace. Gas stations, banks, convenience stores and even the smallest retail business must shell out for CCTV that would make East Germany blush.

Crimes of assault, murder, and theft mean that parents sit in their cars to meet the school bus every day at dropoff and pickup. Kids are smothered by caution and raised to be anxiety cases. In places where our right to bear arms is not infringed, we must purchase and maintain guns and often pay for training and target practice in order to be prepared to defend ourselves against such random acts of violence.

We lavishly fund, via property taxes, the schools so frequently demanded as an equal right but those making the demand send their feral children who disrupt the classroom daily, even hourly, and are promoted/graduated despite having learned nothing because you threaten the schools with fatuous claims of discrimination if they don't.

Reparations? By all means! Now get your checkbook out and start writing!

Jonty30: "$64 trilion dollars now.
It climbs fast."

2ndDivisionVet: "We already gave them about $22 trillion just since LBJ’s administration..."

So where do we even begin with such nonsense?
How about here: $64 trillion is a ridiculous number which equates to $1.7 million for every black man, woman and child.
In no conceivable way does "40 acres and a mule" for a black family in 1865 equate to $1.7 million per black individual today.

The actual today's value of "40 acres and a mule" of farmland away from big cities is circa $50,000.
And the number of black families eligible might be ten million, out of 38 million total blacks in the US.

So, ten million families times $50,000 is not $64 trillion, it's $500 billion, which to me sounds like chump change in a Federal budget over $3 trillion per year.
Indeed, according to this article, we already spend $500 billion twice per year in various forms of welfare to poor in general, African-Americans specifically.

That article puts the total tab for the "war on poverty" at now one trillion per year, overall since 1964: $15 trillion.

The article estimates that during the past 10 years, US governments have spent a total of $1 million per poor family of four, of all races.
So it seems to me this reparations debt has been paid in full many times, and most importantly, has done nothing to reduce our rate of poverty.

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