Posted on 08/17/2004 5:58:48 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
One day after their first meeting, U.S. Senate hopefuls Barack Obama and Alan Keyes were back on the campaign trail again Monday.
Speaking at a news conference at the Hotel InterContinental in Chicago, Republican Keyes added to his now familiar talking points his stance on slavery reparations.
Prompted by a reporter's question, Keyes gave a brief tutorial on Roman history and said that in regard to reparations for slavery, the U.S. should do what the Romans did: "When a city had been devastated [in the Roman empire], for a certain length of time--a generation or two--they exempted the damaged city from taxation."
Keyes proposed that for a generation or two, African-Americans of slave heritage should be exempted from federal taxes--federal because slavery "was an egregious failure on the part of the federal establishment." In calling for the tax relief, Keyes appeared to be reaching out to capture the black vote, something that may prove difficult to do, particularly after his unwelcome reception at the Bud Billiken Day Parade Saturday...
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
You do what you can with what you got - it's the American Way...
Correction, Luis was born in Cuba, and is now an American of Cuban descent.
Here is my unedited post from that thread:
To: BillyBoy"honest hard workers and social conservatives"That's a lie, I have never said that, I don't debate with liars.
I don't give a rat's ass about the Mexican government, I care about the American government, and our policies, and I care about the Mexicophobes whose sole aim is to forever stain the conservative movement with the label of racists.
Mexican illegals constitute 50% of the illegal immigrant population in the US, but Mexicophobes devote 100% of their vitriol on Mexicans, and completely ignore the rest.
There's no concern about illegal immigration here, it's all an issue with the little brown people.
There are some here even trying to justify the use of the type of dehumanizing terminology used towards Jews by Nazi Germany in order to facilitate their eradication.
Some posters in FR, fans of Tom Tancredo, have even gone as far as suggesting that we should launch a nuclear attack on Mexico.
That's their "final solution" I guess.
21 posted on 03/22/2003 10:26:53 AM EST by Luis Gonzalez (The Ever So Humble Banana Republican)
Now, you claim that I directed that statement about "issues with little brown people" to you, I did not, I directed it at Mexicophobes who devote 100% of their time complaining about Mexican illegal immigrants, in spite of the fact that they constitute roughly 50% of the total illegal immigrants entering the US. Either one is against illegal immigration overall, or not.
As far as my remarks being construed as "race-baiting" or not related to the issue at hand, well...frankly your tirade about Vicente Fox was not germane to the subject at hand.
I'll tell you again...Fox is Mexico's problem, not ours, how Mexico interacts with the US is our problem, and that was the theme of that particular thread.
this is actually very smart on the part of Keyes, it puts the Dems in an untenable position.
They can't support the blacks, being a victim and higher taxation all at the same time.
That's not exactly correct. Amendment 16 may be inconsistent with previous constitutional statements, but it does (fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be) allow Congress to levy taxes on our income, explicitly. We had Fabian democrats and early RINOs agreeing that income tax was a good idea.
Amendment XVI
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
My problem is with the unintended consequences of them, but that's a different subject.
For an alternative view, see Income Tax is Unconstitutional by Forest Glen Durland. He sounds like an early Freeper. However, his claims are less than honest. Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916) did not rule against income taxes, for example.
How would this reinvigorate the inner cities? Between the personal and dependent exemptions and the earned income credit, not to mention those who are on welfare, low-income people don't even pay income taxes.
WHOA NELLY!!!! (Foghorn Leghorn voice)
It's crazy-like-a-fox and it just might work. Go Keyes!
My point was that this is the typical POV you will find in the Sun-Times so I am being serious. I'm not a regular reader, perhaps you find them to be more even handed than that. In other threads IL FReepers have called it a left-bent rag.
Certainly not. But you posted the proof of what I said which was that she merely repeated what the Chicago Tribune reported and added little else. In fact it is questionable whether anything but the title are Malkin's own words. There are just two quotes from two sources. Period.
I'm not desparate about anything. The paper is unquestionably a leftist rag. The source article for this thread is obviously biased to the left in other respects.
You used Jesse Jackson's own quotes as a source; live with it.
Easy to do. JJ's POV is on a par with the Sun-Times normal POV. Nothing stressful about pointing that out.
Well, then maybe you can read Alan's own words proposing a race-based tax exemption program, A.K.A. "reparations".
On the plus side it has already caused Obama to reject the idea publicly. Every reparations hopeful will get a red flag on that and wonder whether Obama is for them or not. Not one of those people has ever voted Republican. Now he has to explain himself which gives Keyes another chance to tie him up on both tax reform and reparations DNC style.
Keyes: Cancel tax bills for descendants of slaves
The opening article is nothing new. Just WorldNetDaily reposting what they found in the Chicago Tribune. But there's a fresh discussion and a few new links down-thread.
You've confused media coverage with credibility. The transvestite who ran for the Texas legislature got much more coverage than anybody else in the state did, but that doesn't mean he was a good candidate.
Tell me what the "political bind" is. Obama came out against reparations, and he looks reasonable and statesmanlike.
And tell me how we're going to determine how people are descendants of slaves -- there's no way, short of a $$$ government genealogy program, to figure that all out. And even then, tracing heritage via birth records will be next to impossible, since many of those records didn't exist in the first place. Not to mention that most white people are not the descendants of slaveholders, yet they will be paying the tab on this as if they are.
Who are you calling RINO? And Republican who supports reparations, like Alan Keyes does, is the quintessential Republican In Name Only.
The political bind is that the dem, to challenge the plan, naturally adopts a posture FOR taxes to a strong democratic constituency. This isn't a tax on 'the rich' but specifically a tax on many members of a large number of the dem's constituency.
That's the bind - the reparations plan can't be characterized as anything inordinately benefitting the rich, or big corporations, etc.
The bind is that to challenge the plan, the posture will be de facto arguing for taxes.
Verification won't be so hard, you're just looking at it the wrong way - it might be easier, for example, to find out who is disqualified from the benefit rather than finding who is qualified, as a first cut.
That is, a first step may be to work backwards from immigration records and other information to find black americans who were not born in the USA, for example. They would be disqualified.
Then from the existing pool, they need to verify that the person has at least one great-grandparent was born in the USA, for example, and if that is the case (now we are going back to around 1890-1900) that there can be a legitimate presumption that they are desendants of slaves.
Birth records are out there, as are immigration records. You also only have to do this analysis once, not every year or anything, to qualify someone or disqualify them.
Someone who can trace lineage, for example, to a grandmother and grandfather that were both born in africa, for example, wouldn't qualify, since their family history in the USA, for practical purposes, begins after the end of slavery and that history traces back to someplace other than the USA.
This isn't that difficult to do.
As for your problem in picking up the tab, the tab would not be picked up only by whites - I don't know why you would draw that conclusion. It would be picked up by everyone - whites, blacks who don't qualify, latinos, euros, asians, mid-easterns - everyone.
While none of those folks are necessarily desendants to slave holders, that's misdirection and there is no need to take it so personally. This isn't reparations from descendants of slaveowners to desendants of slaves, it is reparations from the USA to descendants of slaves. The USA institutionally supported the slavery system for decades. Whether any one of us is a descendant of slaveowner is immeterial - we are all citizens of the USA, who supported this cultural and racist wrong.
Taking the posture that it should be slaveowners paying is misplaced.
In any event, all americans (regardless of color) will pick up the tab. I don't think that criticism is valid at all.
You are completely missing the point. Swing voters and even Republicans are listening to this, and they're agreeing with Obama's stance, not Keyes. So Obama looks reasonable and moderate, and will gain votes from this.
Verification won't be so hard, you're just looking at it the wrong way - it might be easier, for example, to find out who is disqualified from the benefit rather than finding who is qualified, as a first cut.
If you really think this would be limited to descendants of slaves, or that it's even reasonable to trace the lineage of all black people in a society where single parenthood is rampant, you're completely unrealistic. Besides, discrimination after the Civil War happened to all black people, regardless of whether their ancestors were slaves. But under your idea, only descendants of slaves would be paid money, even though they could be "white" and never personally suffered one day in their life from discrimination.
Whether any one of us is a descendant of slaveowner is immeterial - we are all citizens of the USA, who supported this cultural and racist wrong.
This is Liberalspeak 101 -- we're all collectively guilty! It's society's fault! Gimme a break. I can't believe a "conservative" would buy into this nonsense, as there is absolutely nothing conservative about making society equally guilty for something that ended 140 years ago.
And under your and Keyes' plan, Terrell Owens, LeBron James, Derek Jeter, Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, and their children would be exempt from paying taxes, because these millionaire celebrities have suffered so much from slavery. That's fair?
I don't think I am missing the point at all. The reparations plan as I articlate it is fair and could gain wide support from African Americans, liberal whites, fair minded conservatives, and more. The plan may not win the day this time, but this is the best approach to reparations out there. Can we get a majority of people for a plan like this? Certainly, especially if it is explained well.
You misunderstand the legal basis for reparations as I see it and that leads you to a poorly formed conclusion. It has nothing at all to do with being a discriminated black in the USA in the century or more after the civil war. We have policies in place to address those problems, though they may by poorly thought out and we may disagree with them, that issue has been and will continue to be addressed independent of a slave reparations matter.
Verification isn't impossible and like I said, needs only to be done once. What I outlined is doable, if not easy. Like I said, a first cut can be done easily with immigration records alone.
Reparations, as I see it, isn't deserved by every black american, but only by desendants of slaves (actually only deserved by actual slaves but since we can't pay them, we can extend a benefit to their descendants). I would only support a plan that benefits this discrete class, since that's the only way that reparations ('amends') is logical and moral.
This is distinct from extending a benefit to address racism and bigotry, which may rightfully be extended to all members of a racial or cultural class.
There is no liberalspeak involved. There IS guilt on the part of the government that ENDORSED a racist and morally reprehensible policy of humans being legally considered less than human and in fact, the propery of another human being.
This wouldn't even be an issue if the government didn't institutionally support the convention of slavery. Clearly, it did! Denying that is absurd and is one of the things that has kept Republicans from making inroads with minorities, especially blacks.
You misplace the emphasis - this has less to do with society being collectively guilty and more to do with the US Government as a specific entity being respobnsible for the practice, which unquestionably it was.
Reparations has a sound legal, moral, and historical precedent - the establishment of the Indian Reservation system and reparations to interned Japanese americans come to mind.
As for the example you gave of black americans who are wealthy, asking if it is fair that they, if descended from slaves, should get the full benefit of Tax Amnesty as reparations, the answer is clearly YES, and of course it is fair. In fact, it's the definition of fair.
Think of this less as a social program to be kind to black folks, and more of a targeted policy to make amends of an institutional wrong. Regardless of the financial status of the person today, the wrong was still done to their ancestors and reparations are entirely fair.
And that is what Alan Keyes does fabulously, engaging in academic exercises when he's supposed to be campaigning. It is not fair to the people of Illinois for Alan Keyes to be discussing the Supreme Court, and reparations for himself and others like him while running for a seat to represent the people of Illinois, but then again, he can't speak about Illinois and issues that pertain specifically to the people he would represent because of his absolute lack of intimacy with the State, its voters, and the issues that concern them.
So Alan throws out red herrings to draw attention away from his lack of knowledge.
"I think it was a dumb thing to do but he explains that his real goal is fair taxation for everybody."
Is that a fact?
He wants to exempt black descendants of slaves from taxation for "a generation or two"...I guess Alan would work on fair taxation for everybody in about 40 years or so.
"On the plus side it has already caused Obama to reject the idea publicly."
And Thomas Sowell, and Walter Williams, and Rush Limbaugh, and...
He does however seem to enjoy the support of Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al.
Nice job.
We don't need *any* approach for reparations. It's a lousy idea in the first place. It's like coming up with a humane approach to infanticide.
There is no liberalspeak involved. There IS guilt on the part of the government that ENDORSED a racist and morally reprehensible policy of humans being legally considered less than human and in fact, the propery of another human being. This wouldn't even be an issue if the government didn't institutionally support the convention of slavery. Clearly, it did!
And the government stopped slavery with the blood of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The reparations were paid on the battlefields of the Civil War, something Alan Keyes used to say, before he started pandering.
Besides, there was also government discrimination against anybody who wasn't a white Protestant male in this country -- there were anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-women, anti-Hispanic policies in this country. And once you open the door on reparations, all the rest of those folks can make their cases as well, and get out of paying taxes.
And you also fail to note the ramifications of your scheme. You think race relations are bad now? Wait until non-black people are paying all the taxes in the country, while black people, including millionaires, get a free ride for two generations. You and Keyes' idea also fails to note that the actual poor blacks in this country don't pay income tax, so they will get no reparations out of this. So the reparations would be paid to those who have already been successful enough to pay taxes, while the poor don't get reparations. Do you think Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will be okay with that? No, so those people will have to be compensated as well.
As for the rest of your post, it's frankly all liberal nonsense. If you want to feel guilty over something that happened 140 years ago, why don't you go ahead and give all your paychecks to any descendants of slaves that you see. But leave the rest of us out of it.
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