Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show today is Soledad Ursua. She's a Los Angeles resident. She works in

finance and she serves on the Venice Neighborhood Council. She's written a number of

excellent pieces for City Journal and her work has been featured in several additional outlets,

including The LA Times, the American Mind,

Fox News, and a variety of Los Angeles area publications. Today we're going to discuss her essay

Victimhood Forever, which appears in our special California issue and details California's efforts

to provide reparations to black residents. So,

Soledad, thank you very much for joining us. Hi, thank you so much for having me. So, you know,

two years ago, California Governor Gavin Newsom set up the reparations task force, which was charged with developing a proposal to compensate

the state's black residents for the injustice of slavery. And late last year, the task

force released a preliminary report on its findings. You know, as you note in your piece,

there's a lot problematic with this. So why don't you describe a bit where things stand with the

task force and, you know, why you don't think this is such a great idea? The initial reparations

task force report has projected that descendants from slaves could earn as much as 223,000 in compensation for past injustice.

And the projected total cost to California taxpayers, it could reach about $569 billion.

And that's almost two and a half times the state's current budget. We do not have the final numbers. The final number should come out in June 2023. And the monetary payouts could be bigger because we're also looking at other areas, such as mass incarceration, forced sterilization, and devaluation of black business. So we're still not quite sure what the total number will be.

You also see at the same time that San Francisco has gone ahead with its own reparations,

recommendations.

So the city of San Francisco is recommending it's a $5 million payout to every eligible black adult, the elimination of

personal debt and tax burdens, a guaranteed annual income of $97,000 for 250 years, and the

ability to purchase homes in San Francisco for just $1 of family. So what we see here is you have

...