Reparations
Re “Tax the wealthy to pay for reparations” (Other Views, June 18): How much and who qualifies? Will a billionaire like Oprah Winfrey get reparations, as her great-great-grandfather was a former slave?
Peter Beilenson says reparations were paid to Japanese Americans, and Holocaust survivors and their heirs. The difference here is proponents are seeking reparations for every African American, not just those with a direct genetic lineage to slaves.
Most Americans oppose reparations. Direct cash payments would only further divide the country, but that’s what reparations proponents primarily support. Despite a $32 trillion federal debt, Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri, says, “America must provide reparations if we desire a prosperous future for all.” She called for $14 trillion in reparations for descendants of slaves and people of African descent.
With some economists estimating roughly an $800 billion price tag, California’s Reparations Task Force recommends cash payments, among other things, for slavery and racial inequities. If adopted by the California State Legislature, CalMatters says, “a 19-year-old who moved to California in 2018 would be owed at least $149,799 based on the calculations, but a 71-year-old who has lived in California all their life could be owed about $1.2 million.”
I believe reparations should be a meaningful investment that moves impoverished African American communities toward economic self-sufficiency, not some money grab that promotes mendicancy and the political patronage that thrives on it.
Joe Naneville, Windsor
Trump’s plot
Former President Donald Trump hews to a classical con man approach to personal adversity: If a man is put upon by his enemies, he should turn the tables on them, then come back at them even harder. Alas, this strategy serves to provoke recurring cycles of violence, ill will and futile retribution.
Quite upset, by all indications, by his remarkable first federal indictment, Trump, freshly filled with resentment, most assuredly does want to turn the tables. He has a big plan for his anticipated second term as our president.
He has recently vowed to place the Department of Justice under his own personal control — that is, to bring to an end the Justice Department’s traditional independence. That way, he could freely strike at his “enemies” (his target No. 1 would be President Joe Biden) without anyone else’s interference with his actions.
He would at the same time be destroying our freedoms. Let’s say that you are about to be brought up on some charges. Your fate would then lie either in the hands of an anger-fueled, erratic narcissist, or in the hands of a group of some of his lieutenants, who would of course answer to no one but him. In effect, then, his scheme amounts to establishing himself as our first-in-the-nation dictator, whose arbitrary judgments would never be accountable to any other person, nor to any organization.
Stan Pearson, Newport News
Poor resume
When I consider a candidate’s qualifications for public office, I consider him or her as I would a job applicant. I look at what a resume would present. Former President Donald Trump wishes once again to hold the position of president.
He is a man who has been found liable in civil court for sexual abuse. He has been impeached by the House of Representatives twice. He has been the author of thousands of documented falsehoods (lies). He has bankrupted major corporations after taking large payments from them for his positions. He encouraged a riot at the U.S. Capital, which resulted in deaths and destruction, at which time he expressed support for hanging his vice president. Trump’s resume, if presented with truthful content, would read like a rap sheet.
John Kellogg, Norfolk
