How did Maryland legislators manage to sneak this law through?
By: Gregory Kane
April 27, 2009
As of 2009 in Maryland, “insurance companies wishing to do business…must disclose any policies they or their predecessor firms provided to slave owners until 1865...”
You read that correctly. The quote comes from The Daily Record of April 14. Gov. Martin O’Malley signed this meaningless, do-nothing bill into law on April 12. It was sponsored by Baltimore state Sen. Lisa Gladden. As a result of this latest display of “Democrats Gone Wild,” insurance company executives now have to become historians. To quote directly from The Daily Record story:
“The law, formerly Senate Bill 751, requires insurance companies to disclose to the state’s insurance commissioner each of their slaveholder policies, including the name of the owner and the slaves. The companies have until Oct. 1, 2011, to comply. The insurance commissioner will issue a report by April 1, 2012, containing those names as well as copies of the policies. The report will be made available to the public and posted on the Maryland Insurance Administration’s Web site. The new law also requires that a copy of the report be kept at the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland School of Law to honor the late black civil rights attorney and Supreme Court justice…”
And how did Gladden justify wasting taxpayers’ time and money by having her fellow legislators pass such useless legislation? It’s “not about meting out punishment for long-ago wrongs but helping Americans gain a deeper understanding of the evils of slavery and to find peace with the nation’s checkered past,” she told The Daily Record. Then she added this corker.
“This is about becoming comfortable with our history. This is about healing. Let’s move on.”
It occurs to me that 99.9 percent of the nation’s population has already “moved on.” Most Americans know slavery was evil. If those advocates of reparations for slavery had a buck for every white American who has said slavery was evil, then those advocates wouldn’t need reparations. When it comes to slavery, the vast majority of Americans have already “moved on.” Gladden just needs to catch up with the rest of us.
Usually when something like this happens, you can bet there’s a hidden agenda involved. In fact, if you Google the words “hidden agenda” I wouldn’t be surprised if Gladden’s picture popped up. Either hers or some other reparations for slavery advocates.
Because that is where this will lead. First comes the hump-busting law requiring companies to show that they were involved in and profited from slavery. Once that’s done, you can bet there will be a call for those companies to pay out some reparations money.
And it won’t be cheap.
Gladden tried to mask her hidden agenda with some noble, high-falutin’ language. So did some of the University of Maryland School of Law students who helped her draft SB 751. One of them, Michelle McCloud, told The Daily Record she hopes the law “sparks a discussion” about slavery and that “it’s important to get a dialogue going.”
Once again it is my happy duty to translate sappy liberal-ese into plain, simple English. When libs and lefties say they want to “talk about” slavery or race relations or “get a dialogue” going about those matters, what they mean is this:
“We only want those people who agree with us to take part in the discussion. If you’re going to bring up that annoying business of how whites in Europe and America tried to end slavery and the slave trade while Africans and Arabs were actively engaged in it, then you’re not welcome in the discussion.”
The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who worked in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson before he became a U.S. senator from New York, found this out the hard way when his report on the black family came out in 1965. Moynihan said that the matriarchal family structure of black America was a problem, and predicted with chilling accuracy what would happen if the problem got worse.
Moynihan, a liberal, was shouted down by his fellow liberals who happened to be black before the ink was barely dry on his report. So much for “dialogue.”
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is an award-winning journalist who lives in Baltimore.
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