San Francisco To Pay $5M Per Resident in Reparations?, IL Sherriffs Defy Governor, Microsoft Lays Off 10,000, And River Pirates! (The Five for 01/18/23)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
A publication about the important stories in news & culture that are often overlooked.
Let’s dive into the news.
[one]
The debate over reparations in America turned…bizarre this week in San Francisco.
A San Francisco city committee has recommended paying each eligible Black resident $5 million worth of reparations.
The fifteen-member San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee, established in December 2020, submitted a Draft San Francisco Reparations Plan last month to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors including the proposed amount.
Even though California was never officially a slave state, the committee argued that both the state and the City of San Francisco have perpetuated "the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression."
Besides the one-time “lump sum” payment of $5 million to eligible residents, the draft also recommends all low-income Black residents be supplemented enough money to reach the area’s median income (AMI) which, according to the report, was $97,000 in 2022.
In addition to the $5M lump sum and up to $97,000 in income, the proposal also recommends paying off student loans, car notes and credit card debt for the recipients.
Call me crazy, but it seems like if you’re a millionaire…you can handle those bills on your own.
There are only two possibilities here:
A. The City Council are crazy (par for the course in San Francisco).
or (more likely)
B. They don’t want it to pass.
There’s almost no chance the city could pay out such a huge sum of money. If they raised corporate taxes, the tax base would flee. And major metropolitans are not known for local governance that is smart enough to keep cash on hand.
If the authors of this proposal don’t want it to pass…then the motivation is simply to make the proposed law big enough that it has to fail, so the authors of the bill can point to their opponents and/or media outlets they don’t like and call them “uncaring” and “mean.”
Which doesn’t help anybody.
[two]
Just days after Illinois became the ninth U.S. state to ban assault rifles, the state already hit a roadblock to implementing the law: defiant sheriff's offices.
At least 74 Illinois sheriff's departments have publicly vowed to defy elements of a recent gun-control law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which banned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches. The offices have vowed to not check if weapons are registered with the state or house individuals arrested only for not complying with the law.
As the number of uncooperative sheriff's offices increased, Pritzker has made his own vow – to ensure those members of law enforcement who fail to "do their job… won't be in their job."
The Illinois Sheriffs' Association issued a statement Wednesday expressing continued opposition to the law. Simultaneously, dozens of sheriff's offices began to post nearly identical messages promising they would not check for compliance with the law or arrest offenders of the law.
Currently, Dupage County, the state’s second largest after Chicago’s Cook County, refuses to enforce the law, as do the Sherriffs of at least 74 of Illinois’ 104 counties.
Governor Pritzker threatened that “law enforcement who do not do their job…will not have a job.” However, the Governor has no power to fire a local Sherriff in Illinois.
It’s still unclear if Illinois’ highly restrictive law will hold up to attempts to overturn the new rules in higher courts.
[three]
Ukraine lost a high ranking official today, although it’s unclear if the death was a result of the war.
A helicopter flying in the fog crashed Wednesday into a kindergarten in a residential suburb of the capital, Kyiv, killing Ukraine’s interior minister and about a dozen other people, including a child on the ground, authorities said.
Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who oversaw the country’s police and emergency services, is the most senior official killed since Russia invaded nearly 11 months ago. His death, along with two others from his ministry, was the second major calamity in four days to befall Ukraine, after a Russian missile struck an apartment building in the southeastern city of Dnipro, killing dozens of civilians.
There was no immediate word on whether the helicopter crash, which occurred on a foggy morning in Kyiv’s eastern suburb of Brovary, was an accident or related to the war, but Ukrainian authorities immediately opened an investigation. No fighting has been reported recently in the capital region.
[four]
Another major layoff hit the tech sector today, another sign of a recession coming in 2023.
Microsoft said Wednesday that it is cutting 10,000 jobs as it deals with economic uncertainty and shifts focus to areas of growth, such as artificial intelligence.
The cuts, which begin today and will go through March, will impact less than 5% of Microsoft's global workforce, said CEO Satya Nadella in a memo to employees. The tech giant declined to say what roles are being cut, but the layoffs are reportedly impacting its engineering divisions.
"These decisions are difficult, but necessary," said Nadella. "They are especially difficult because they impact people and people's lives – our colleagues and friends."
The cuts come ahead of Microsoft's quarterly earnings on Tuesday and almost three months to the day since the tech giant laid off nearly 1,000 employees in October. It's the largest layoff at Microsoft in roughly 8 years, since the company cut more than 20,000 jobs between 2014 and 2015 following its ill-fated acquisition of phone maker Nokia.
In addition to the job cuts, Microsoft said it also plans to make changes to its hardware portfolio and consolidate its leased office spaces. The changes, including severance, are expected to cost the company $1.2 billion, Nadella said.
[five]
And finally…the audio and video roundup.
A quick reminder, due to the popularity of the pop culture roundup in the Friday culture edition, this feature has been added to the News edition of The Five.
Economist Peter Zeihan on Joe Rogan’s podcast is an absolute must listen for anyone with an interest in international affairs.
Zeihan predicts the collapse of China due to the population clash, the return of international piracy on the oceans (argh!) and pumps up wind as the main renewable energy source, which he claims is on the verge of a major breakthrough.
Zeihan’s latest book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, is an excellent read (I’m currently 2/3 of the way through it).
To conclude this issue, this video on America’s first serial killers, a pair of brothers (or cousins) who attacked and butchered pro-Revolution Americans is a heck of a history lesson (DO NOT listen to this one with young kids around).
And to tie it into Zeihan’s book/interview above, this video covers river pirates on the Mississippi (argh! again).
Until the next one,
-sth