Here we go again: Berger makes sense on reparations, Tillis DOES NOT

 

 

Let’s recap.  We have record unemployment, and one of the highest gas tax burdens in America.  We have the third highest amount of debt to the federal government — to the tune of $2.5 billion and counting — in THE NATION.  Meanwhile, the state is GIVING away valuable pieces of property.   Never mind selling some stuff to raise revenue to pay off that debt.   Tillis and his lieutenants in the House are seriously floating the idea of jacking up enemployment taxes to go toward paying the debt to the feds.

The remnants of our state’s mainstream media are praising the nominal Republican speaker of the state House for his continued desire to pay $50,000 per person sterilized by the state of North Carolina between the 1930s and 1970s.   Senate president pro tem Phil Berger said his troops refused to back the House measure last session due to the state’s tough financial state of affairs.  It sounds like Berger’s view has not changed:

[…] During the 2012 legislative session, the Republican-controlled House approved one-time, tax-free payments of $50,000 per eugenics victim. Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue also recommended the payments in her budget proposal, but the Republican-controlled Senate chose not to support the idea and it died.

So if the House approves victim payments again, what would the Senate do? With the start of the session in late January, that’s unclear.

It’s too early to determine whether a eugenics compensation bill would have enough support in the Senate, said Amy Auth, a spokeswoman for Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, who is expected to lead the Senate for two more years.

“While his heart goes out to the victims, the current economic environment – coupled with the difficult budgetary realities inherited from past General Assemblies – prevented us from pursuing proposals to provide financial compensation during our last session,” Auth said. […]

The current economic crisis is an important reason not to back this, but there is one more really important question:  Where does this reparation stuff STOP?  How about the ancestors of people, whose homes were burned by General Sherman during his march to the sea, seeking money from the federal government?  How about the ancestors of former slaves seeking reparations from the state and federal governments?  What about Native Americans?  Where does it stop?

A lot of bad things have happened in the past history of this country and the world.  How does confiscating even more resources from people who had NOTHING to do with those bad things make it all better?   Our job is to learn from the past and TRY REALLY HARD not to repeat our mistakes.