🇺🇸 Payback

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Good morning, and happy Monday! Otto Rohwedder, a native of Des Moines, Iowa, created the invention by which all others are judged: sliced bread. Check out his fascinating story.

Plus, are we in a rolling recession? Here's what that is, and why economists think we are.

Also, most people these days think they have two options when it comes to getting a replacement spinal disc. But you can invest in the company providing another way.

FLAG POLLS

📉 Sunday, January 29: President Biden Job Approval: Approve 46, Disapprove 50 (NBC News)

🐘 Sunday, January 29: 2024 Generic Congressional Vote: Republicans 47, Democrats 46 (NBC News)

📉 Sunday, January 29: Direction of Country: Right Direction 23, Wrong Track 71 (NBC News)

🐘 Friday, January 27: 2024 South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary: Trump 43, DeSantis 28, Scott 14, Haley 12, Pence 2, Pompeo 1 (Trafalgar Group, R)

TRENDING

Left: We're Seeing the First Major Blow to Biden's Image Julian Zelizer, CNN

Left: America Sacrifices Its Babies to the Altar of Guns Jill Filipovic, The Guardian

Left: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Slams Republican Who Urged Her To 'Educate' Herself Ben Blanchet, HuffPost

Right: The Caesars of the Information Age Brendan O'Neill, Spiked

Right: GOP Needs To Get Its Act Together on Mail-In Voting Scott Presler, The Federalist

Right: The Real Great Reset Richard Fernandez, PJ Media

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QUICK CLICKS

Tyre Nichols, Super Bowl 57, Pelosi's Attacker Speaks

US: Death of Tyre Nichols revives calls in Congress for policing reforms (CNBC) + Protesters across the US decry police brutality after Tyre Nichols' death (CNN)

Sports: Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles win to set up meeting for NFL championship (BBC)

US: Rep. Michael McCaul on Air Force general's prediction of war with China: 'I hope he's wrong... I think he's right' (NBC News)

Sports: ESPN's Chris Fowler, John McEnroe have awkward exchange over Novak Djokovic's 'choices' after Aussie Open win (Fox News)

US: Trump criticizes “disloyal” DeSantis' COVID record (Axios)

US: Alleged Pelosi attacker DePape calls news outlet from jail, makes ‘chilling and bizarre’ remarks (The Hill)

World: Canadian theater sparks outrage after announcing black-only performances (NY Post)

US: NYC's snowless Central Park breaks record for latest measurable snowfall since 1973 (Eyewitness News)

RACE

Payback

Last month, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee submitted a proposal to city officials recommending Black residents be made eligible for a one-time payment of $5 million. It’s a 60-page document that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will now consider.

Reporting from the Left: San Francisco reparations committee proposes a $5 million payment to each Black resident (CNN)

Reporting from the Right: San Francisco reparations proposal makes waves: 'America must admit its sin' (Fox News)

From The Flag: The committee has no ability to enact its recommendation, although a response is expected from the Board of Supervisors, who can amend, reject, or accept the proposal. The board’s full report will likely be published sometime this summer. Here’s more from both sides.

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

San Francisco Surprises No One By Ignoring History and Stoking Resentment

• A quick lesson in history and San Francisco’s demographics highlight how silly this proposal is.

• San Francisco’s politicians, like officials at the state level, are happy to blame racism and slavery rather than address their failures.

• The committee’s plan is wide-reaching and broad in scope, similar to how the left treats the issue of race in general.

“San Francisco Reparations Program a Terrible Idea” The Editors, National Review: “The notion that the city of San Francisco, as an entity, owes reparations for slavery is preposterous. The enslavement of Africans and their descendants by Europeans and their descendants in what is now the United States traces back to 1526 in Spanish Georgia, 1619 in British Virginia, and 1626 in Dutch New York. Racial chattel slavery was formalized in law in Virginia in 1661 and Maryland in 1664. San Francisco, by contrast, was not even discovered by Europeans until 1769, had no permanent non–Native American settlement until 1835, and had fewer than 300 residents until 1846. What built the city was the Gold Rush. … Over 34 percent of San Franciscans are foreign-born, having no historic ties to the American past. That number has been above a third for four decades, and it was also consistently between a third and half of the city’s population between 1860 and 1910.”

“California, Never a Slave State, Considers Reparations” Will Swaim, Wall Street Journal Op-ed: “The real challenge to black and other poor Californians is bad government. Take the state’s execrable public education system. California ranks dead last in the nation in literacy. Black children are the most brutalized by these failures: Only 10% meet math standards and about 30% achieve English competency. … Denied a real education, many of these children will qualify only for low-level jobs and government assistance. … The same applies to California’s climate laws… financed by poor Californians… (through) higher transportation, energy and housing costs. … Raising the banner of social justice, California’s political establishment addresses each of these and other policy failures with new claims of racism… Confronted with their failures, the establishment has now come to the bottom of the barrel of excuses: Blame slavery, punish those who didn’t engage in it and reward those who didn’t suffer from it directly.”

One more opinion piece from the Right: No to San Francisco's ridiculous jackpot reparations plan Editorial Board, Washington Examiner

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

San Francisco, Like the Nation At Large, Tries To Overcome An Ugly History

• The only way reparations work is through a “multiracial” approach in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.

• This is a defining moment in San Francisco’s history: will it live up to its reputation as a liberal bastion?

• The $5 million per person actually makes sense given San Francisco’s notorious history of housing discrimination.

“Reparations for Black Americans can work. Here’s how.” Andrew Delbanco, Washington Post Op-ed: “Today, some advocates of reparations propose distributing trillions of dollars to everyone who can demonstrate descent from an enslaved ancestor… Heartfelt as they might be, such purely monetary approaches face overwhelming obstacles… not to mention the mind-boggling price tag… Reparations narrowly conceived will stoke anger and resentment, but reparations broadly imagined can be a force for unity and reconciliation. … such a response must include subsidized housing for low-income Americans; improved access to health care; investments in public transportation; expanded child tax credits; preschool and wraparound services for all children of the sort that affluent families take for granted. It must include renewed investment in community colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, tribal and regional public colleges, where low-income White students as well as Black, Hispanic and Native American students are likely to enroll.”

“$5 million for each longtime Black resident? S.F. has a bold reparations plan to consider” Justin Phillips, San Francisco Chronicle: “What happens next will show whether San Francisco politicians are serious about confronting the city’s checkered past, or are simply pretending to be. While California was never officially a slave state, slaveholders were protected here, and the committee’s research reveals that segregation, systemic oppression and racial prejudice born from the institution of slavery had a profound impact on the city’s evolution. … The period of urban renewal that began in the 1950s remains one of the most damning examples of how local governments stole wealth from Black communities by razing them, and then ensured they never recovered. As AARAC’s report highlights, most of San Francisco’s formerly redlined neighborhoods — where residents were deemed ineligible for federal housing loans between 1933 and 1954 — are low-income neighborhoods undergoing gentrification now.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: We Should All Be Paying Attention To The San Francisco Reparations Proposal Sage Howard, Huffington Post

FLAG THIS

How Americans Respond To Reparations Issue

The majority of Americans don’t agree with the concept of reparations, as 68% are opposed to paying money or deeding land to descendants of slavery. Three in 10 say they ought to be repaid in some way.

In terms of race, 77% of Black Americans support reparations, compared with 18% of White respondents.

Broken down politically, Democrats are nearly evenly split, with 49% opposed to reparations and 48% in favor. Republicans are clear in their opposition to the idea, with 91% against it, and just 8% in support (Pew Research).

FLAG FINDS

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WATERCOOLER

Gandhi Gone, Micromanipulation, and Shoveling Without Hurting Your Back

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as Mahatma Gandhi, the political and spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement, is assassinated in New Delhi by a Hindu extremist on January 30, 1948.

Lifehacker: How to Shovel Snow Without Hurting Your Back

Stylist: Micromanipulation: The Covert Tactic That Narcissists Use in Arguments to Reassert Control

New Yorker: Nobody Has My Condition But Me

Today I Learned that women die 17% more often in car crashes than men. In a frontal car crash with both sexes buckled in, their injury rate is also 73% higher.