Free Republic

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez suggests that California should pay reparations—not for slavery, but for subjecting everyone in the state to a lousy political class. He has a point. As the Golden State’s landscape burned, power grid faltered, and social fabric frayed, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill empaneling a nine-member task force to “study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans,” with “special consideration for African Americans who are descendants of persons enslaved in the United States.” California became the 31st member of the union 170 years ago, in the Compromise of 1850. It entered as a...