You Won't Believe What California Is Up To Now

I heard a joke the other day about California, and they live up to it every day. It went like this: What’s the difference between a cactus and California? A cactus has its pricks on the outside.

This state can waste time and money in massive ways and make it look effortless. In an effort to kill those two birds with one stone, state officials, led by their infamous grease slick of a governor, Gavin Newsom, decided to once again upend common sense and to pick the scab off a wound that only liberals refuse to allow to heal.

Believe it or not, the wound they’re digging into this time is slavery, or as Assembly Bill 2599 specifies, chattel slavery.

The bill forces companies to disclose any historic ties to slavery

The bill forces companies to disclose any historic ties to slavery. Companies with annual worldwide sales exceeding $100 million must examine their records for evidence that they, their predecessors, or subsidiaries engaged in buying or selling enslaved individuals or provided financial support for such transactions, including through insurance or loans.

Also known as the Truth in Disclosure Act, it requires those major corporations doing business in the state to search their records and to submit a sworn affidavit disclosing any historical ties to chattel slavery.

It focuses heavily on antebellum-linked sectors like textiles, tobacco, railroads, shipping, rice, sugar, and financial and insurance companies.

They must verify under penalty of perjury whether they bought, sold, used as collateral, loaned money for, insured, or otherwise facilitated transactions involving enslaved persons.

This monstrosity passed the legislature and awaits action by Governor Gavin Newsom, who has until September 30, 2026, to sign or veto this nonsense. The Civil Rights Department must create a public digital platform by January 3, 2028, to archive and display the disclosures.

The bill is encountering opposition from insurance companies, which claim it largely duplicates a previous California law mandating insurers to reveal past policies issued to slaveholders that covered the deaths or injuries of enslaved individuals. This is why New York Life Insurance Company, Aetna Life Insurance Company, and AIG were among the companies that previously revealed connections to enslaved people and slaveholders.

What the hell is going on here? Passing bills to force companies to go back decades looking for links to slavery?

What will this prove? Nothing. Companies like society evolve; all this does is pander to the reparations freaks and radical liberals who believe that they are owed something, when they're not.

This is all about being a Democrat, which ironically has nothing to do with democracy.