Today at City Hall there's an interesting rhetorical gambit which references historic American atrocities and threatens to influence the current conversation regarding an embattled entertainment district now asking for SIX MILLION BUCKS from an already busted budget.
Throughout this discussion and amid outcry of "disinvestment" we've reminded our blog community that the Kansas City 18th & Vine Jazz District has garnered more than $100-MILLION since the 90s.
However, our admonition was met with an equally relevant response that deserves consideration.
To wit . . .
THE ARGUMENT FOR U.S. SLAVERY REPARATIONS JUSTIFIES HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS SPENT ON THE JAZZ DISTRICT AND SIX MILLION MORE THAT MIGHT BE APPROVED TODAY!!!
In a public response to our first news, here's the justification and the big picture from a jazz aficionado and supporter of the district:
"The only way to create economic parity in Kansas City is reparations. $100 million+ for business & neighborhood development won't make up for residents in neighborhood who have been robbed of opportunities to grow wealth and maintain investments. Fix the root issue first."
From our vantage this logic is a leap or, in jazz terms, scat gone astray. Policy makers at 12th & Oak, thankfully, don't have much of a say over reparations and it's unlikely this tune will play West of Troost. However, viewed from an increasingly popular perspective which demands reparations; cutting off funding from this district would, in fact, represent another racist refrain from lawmakers as demands to kneel in solidarity with Black Lives Matter activists now strike a chord across American popular culture.
For the moment it seems that Mayor Lucas hasn't voiced an opinion one way or another. And, most importantly, there's really no plan in place to spend the SIX MILLION BUCKS responsibly in order to work toward at least some semblance of self-sustainability for this increasingly violent urban attraction.
Sadly, the details of jazz district spending and fundamental economic principles of municipal spending aren't nearly as exciting as partisan campaign season slap-fighting or the prospect of free money from the government to redress historical grievances.
Check the links:
The Hill: UN human rights chief urges reparations for 'centuries of violence and discrimination' beginning with slavery and colonization
Forbes: An Overdue Debt — Why It’s Finally Time To Pay Reparations To Black Americans
NPR: A Call For Reparations: How America Might Narrow The Racial Wealth Gap
Reuters: Calls for reparations gain steam as U.S. reckons with racial injustice
Guardian UK: Calls for reparations are growing louder. How is the US responding?
You decide . . .
the jazz district is just a bad idea. Black or white. Doesn't matter. Paying customers just don't want to visit. With all of the shooting, can your really blame them?
ReplyDeleteActually, the Blue Note is one of the best jazz clubs in the nation and people from all over the country go there to listen to ground breaking artists. Just want to let the boomers know that it's not all bad news in Kansas City.
Delete^^^^
Delete+100
True. Blue note is fantastic. But the walk back to the car is always precarious if you didn't park close. Sorry, but that's reality.
Sure Darren. Except you've never been there because the club is called the Blue Room. It sucks. The bar sucks, the service sucks and the layout sucks.
DeleteNo matter what your race, creed or color. Everybody loves free money!
ReplyDelete^^^ Lulz.
DeleteNothing is free and if it is, it won't be worth much for long.
ReplyDeleteTalk about extorting money! Your mayor is a mad man and also a racist white hater. This is extortion!
Actually @8:24. The Mayor might vote no on this. Not everyone is in favor of it and likely won't make it out of committee if there is any justice in the world.
Deletewe want 500,000 for each black person.
ReplyDeleteTrump could win easily if he even talks about it. Reparations is the path to presidential victory in 2020.
ReplyDelete8:24, only a racist would call a black man a racist.
ReplyDeleteSays the rayciss bLIEron, who claims he will believe in the verdict from ONLY AN ALL BLACK JURY in a white female plaintiff's lawsuit for wrongful termination!!!
Deleteand yet Trump has Zero path to victory. Weird.
ReplyDeleteWhy not just give the keys to the City Hall and the municipal checkbook to the blacks and let them have it? Hell, that's what we've been doing anyway, look how screwed up it is!!
ReplyDeleteChigger is up!
ReplyDeleteJazz is just autistic kids with instruments. It is not music.
ReplyDeleteTOP PHOTO -- BLACK LIES MATTER
ReplyDeleteThe 18th and Vine District ONLY exists via public tax dollar subsidy. Even the Mayor of KCMO lives there in subsidized housing, despite a salary of some $144,000 taxpayer dollars per year.
Reparations is the new Government Cheese!!!
If calling someone a racist makes you a racist then Blieron is a racist. Oops!
ReplyDeleteBlacks everywhere are a drain on society. How much money has been wasted feeding blacks here and across the globe.
ReplyDeleteFeeding and give a-ways has created a fragile race of dependency and entitlement.
Why can asians, middle eastern, Africans, and Indians compete and thrive in this so-called white man's world, american blacks cannot?
Spend the money on betterment of society - create jobs with building projects and scientific research.
Byron is already whipping-up a bogus "genealogy" so he can cash-in on this. Hopefully NPR, Reuters, The Guardian, and Forbes will make it another decade so they can run pieces analyzing how all of the money was blown in about eighteen months. Or went to pay the hospital bills for all of the Black-on-Black violence in our cities, for which taxpayers are on the hook for. Twenty people got shot last weekend in Minneapolis alone- who is paying for all that?
ReplyDeleteAnd don't kid yourself, none of these people care about Slavery. If they did, they wouldn't allow us to import anything produced in the Third World.
BLACK PEOPLE BURN AND THEIR OWN COMMUNITIES KILL THEIR OWN PEOPLE JUST SO THE LEFTEST DEMOCRAT LIBERAL ELITES CAN GET WHAT THEY WANT. FARMERS FOR TRUMP 16
ReplyDeleteAmen 9:32
DeleteBYRON IS A LIBERAL WANTABE SUCKLING
ReplyDelete^^and you are a pants-shitting, good-for-nothing, pig-fucker.
ReplyDeleteSo long as each recipient of "Reparations" takes a DNA test to determine that they have absolutely no "White" ancestry!
ReplyDeleteOtherwise we'd be stealing the "Reparation" money from those who deserve it and handing it to the descendants of the "oppressors"!
"Not ONE DROP of WHITE BLOOD! Or NO BUCKS AT ALL!"
I'll go along with reparations for anyone alive that was a slave and did not receive minimum wage.
ReplyDelete@8:22 isn't saying "the Blue Note is one of the best jazz clubs in the nation" the same as saying a broken toe is preferable to a broken leg? The Jazz District has, since the beginning, ignored the massive contributions of Whites to Jazz (but noooo - that's not Racist) and therefore has by its own paradigm made its4lf irrelevant. You might want to read the on-line comments that out-of-towners who have gone there write - they paint quite a different picture than the one you seem to have.
ReplyDeleteAn investment of $100+ million dollars of taxpayer money deserves competent management and oversight. The 18th & Vine has suffered from poor venue management and incompetent oversight from KCMO City Council. Pouring more money after wasted money is not the solution.
ReplyDeleteThe management staff and city council couldn't supervise building a homecoming float. We have zero-0-no confidence in those people.
Reparations you say! Free money you mean! Suddenly I'm beginning to self identify as black - oh, sorry, Black.
ReplyDeleteGive it more money. Then I will get a second Rolex and some other goodies!
ReplyDelete^^^ YES!
ReplyDeleteWill descendants of Union Army soldiers who died to end slavery get a reparations discount?
ReplyDeleteWill the descendants of free Blacks have to pay reparations?
It's really amazing, but certainly not a surprise, when the "reporter" on a local TV station can state that of the $27 million in tax money slated for 18th and Vine, "only" $7 million has been approved.
ReplyDeleteAll the while IGNORING the over $100 million that has already been dumped into this black hole with terrible results and no accountability.
Almost as clueless on the media's part as their pitiful observation after they report each of the endless murders that you can call the TIPS hotline "if you know anything".
Do these people have any idea at all of what's happening in their own community?
Willful ignorance.
The blacks seem to be the only race that needs their hand held all the time. Grow up and join society as responsible self sufficient adults or go back to your tribes in Africa. You have been getting extra everything since the civil war, time to grow up.
ReplyDeleteIf not for slavery 95% + African Americans would just be Africans. If not for the slave trade their ancestors would never have made it to America. Living here instead of Africa is reparations enough.
ReplyDeleteBYRON AND OTHER BLACKS ARE BEING USED LIKE A WARN OUT CONDOM
ReplyDeleteReparations ?
ReplyDeleteAre you fucking kidding me ?
We have already paid $ trillions in welfare, Food Stamps, Section 8 Housing, Pell Grants, Medicaid, inner-city schools, Affirmative Action, etc. to black society.
Will descendants of white Union soldiers killed and maimed in the Civil War also receive reparations as they paid the ultimate price to end slavery?
How about Chinese, Irish, Italian, German and Polish immigrants who were treated like slaves in sweat shops, digging canals, building bridges, building railroads, building dams, building schools, building sky scrapers, working in coal mines etc. Many, many deaths. These are the people that truly built the infrastructure of America. They should receive reparations as well.
All blacks did during this period is do menial work as butlers and cleaning people. They didn't build the infrastructure of America. They sat on their asses and watched with their hands out for freebies.
Reparations is nothing more than another handout, extortion.
ReplyDeleteSlavery has been a part of ALL cultures..White, black, Asian.
there's a reason Eastern Euro people, like Russians, Poles, etc are called "Slavic".
CIVIL WAR IN KILLA CITY LIBERALS KILL LIBERALS I WONDER IF ANY OF THE 91 ARE LIBERALS. WIERD
ReplyDeleteWHY ARE ALL YOU ANTI GUN LIBERALS BUYING GUNS?
ReplyDeleteOTHER THAN YOUR PHONEY BITCHES THAT DONT KNOW HOW TO USE THEM
ReplyDeleteWeird
ReplyDeleteLIBERAL KILLING IN EVERY LIBERAL CITY IN THIS COUNTRY
ReplyDeleteWELFARE BASEMENT BOY WHY DO YOU LIBERALS KILL EACH OTHER?
ReplyDeleteSoooooo.....let's see...KCMO is one of the most murderous cities in the country per capita and is on pace to set hit another high in murders, yet, we have to cut $10M from the police budget and layoff a couple hundred cops. All the while, we have unlimited millions to throw $7M more at this ever growing $100+ million dollar bottomless pit that is the 18th and Vine District. Makes total sense!
ReplyDeleteImagine how many more cops we could have on the streets if just a fraction of the money that has been thrown at 18th and Vine was instead spent on cops....
But hey, as long as Cordish, Whitney Kerr, Mike Blake, JE Dunn, Lowes, etc can still make millions at tax payer's expense while the dead body count continues to grow in this city, all's right with the world, right?
#KorruptCity
THE MAN THAT BUILT 18th AND VINE WAS WHITE SHOULDNT YOU LIBERALS BURN IT DOWN
ReplyDeleteTHE WHITE MAN INVENTED BRICK GLASS NAILS ASPHALT SAXAPHONES BASEBALL BASEBALL BATS BASEBALL GLOVES CARS STREETS SEWERS PARK SYSTEMS WATER SYSTEMS HOTPOCKETS TANG. BURN IT ALL DOWN LIBERAL CUNTS
ReplyDeleteBut the blacks invented peanut butter.
ReplyDeleteYou leave the blacks alone they invented ghettos.
ReplyDeleteWHEN IS BLM GOING TO THE MIDDLE EAST TO PROTEST THE NORTH ARFICAN SLAVE ROUTES INTO THE MIDDLE EAST THAT ARE STILL IN USE. PHONEY LIBERALS
ReplyDeleteGee, DNA says I am 7% black. Is the One Drop Rule still in effect? Can I start marking "black" on any legal document now?
ReplyDeleteByron is a liar and anti American, so why doesn’t he and all his comrades go back to the motherlands.
ReplyDeleteNot one more dime to this place! And if this council approves more money for this wasted project, they should be recalled, everyone of them!
ReplyDelete18th and Vine has potential - everyone sees that. Aside from a couple of heavily subsidized clubs and museums, it's not sustainable. It needs private businesses, residents, and a community that support it. A half city block surrounded by blight is not a draw for the broader city and tourists. It's not enough.
ReplyDeleteThis is where our local media lets us down. You know, asking hard questions, keeping the leaders accountable, asking for results. It will take families moving to the area, shops being open all the time, artists opening shops, restaurants that are engaging....an understanding among people in the community that violence in this area is against their values. The city throwing money at the area for decades hasn't achieved this. It never works.
Jazz musicians weren't slaves.
ReplyDeleteMost insiders to this request know that another $6m doesn't have a chance with the current budget. They're talking about a 5% across-the-board cut already, there's no way 18th & Vine gets an extra $6m from the discretionary bucket. The slavery reparations talking point is just their "hail mary" attempt at the money, I doubt even they believe what they are saying.
ReplyDeleteCan we PLEASE get the streetcar to 18th and Vine
ReplyDeleteThese are times when REAL taxpayer involvement is required. Kerr is trying again for $50m in incentives for his Crossroads hotel... another HOTEL in the current environment. Bluescope wants another 13 years on their already 20 year abatement. 18th & Vine wants another $6m to spend with very little oversight, the true definition of a black hole. The city will be coughing up +/- $20m from the general fund to cover shortfalls on the P/L and Lowes alone. There's more, lots more. Until taxpayers make their voices heard, it will continue.
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to say a place is the best at least get the name right.
ReplyDeleteIt's The Blue Room and always been the Blue Room in the jazz district.
It is a decent place to hear jazz music no doubt. But that is where it ends. Been there three times and one of those times we had to get a cab home as my out of town guests who were so excited to go there will never go back now. Yes they joined the throng of many whose car has been stolen while in the Jazz District. But hey a least we weren't shot and robbed first. There is a huge security issue around 18th and Vine and it will hurt getting people to go there after sunset.
Rather the Blue Room gets any handouts I don't know but if the city is slashing budgets which will effect jobs for people then the city needs to slash all funding for the 18th and Vine area. As I said else where it will either sink or swim which will prove for sure once and for all rather people care about it or not.
Jazz is for old fat white men who played the horn in high school. They are deaf now too from the loud jazz. but it dont stop them from liking jazz, they are a waste of time and money. they need to stay home and play their horn while walking around the house in their underwear.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteAuthorize the money, I want t new Rolex. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteRe: reparations - do you think the average black is going to invest his 20K or 25K -- or whatever the amount -- in real estate, in stocks, bonds, savings, etc?
ReplyDeleteThat cash is gone in a week. Some of it for much-needed items, car repairs, new cars, new applicances, etc., but also a lot will go for tattoos, discretionary spending items.
All gone so fast. It'll be a STIMULUS for business, not a leg up for black Americans.
Very, very few will invest the money into anything that will generate wealth.
Give a stack of cash to people who have living without for a long time, to people without financial skills and understanding, in a culture that values the immediate gratification... that money is gone.
My dna sample said 3% n. african and less than 1% mali.
ReplyDeleteOl' lady must of been kissing a black dude before sample was sent in.
KCPD and this City should pay for what they’ve done to the Wendell Phillips neighborhood with its East Patrol project. This City owes the neighborhood, its residents, former property owners and a demand to FIRE John Miles as Police Chaplin (revenge Stephen character in D’JANGO) for his involvement. THE PEOPLE WANT THEIR MONEY! In addition to the enslavement of their ancestors. Porters Plantantion, where Wendell Phillips neighborhood extends.
ReplyDeleteSee Black Hole. See MONEY. Pour money into black hole. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat.....continue. Thank you from the Black community.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest waste of my money was the funds I gave to Weinrich-Zitzmann-Whitehead in the 1980's. Its gone baby gone. Can you believe their name? Zitzman and whitehead in the same title? Get some pimple cream!!!
ReplyDeleteI like toasted wienies.
ReplyDeleteSleepy Joe Biden
The City owns 100% of the blight in the 18th & Vine area. The City doesn’t need to pass ordinances to fix this. Those are already there. They need private investors to take ownership of the property they’ve failed to maintain.
ReplyDelete^^^ The City also owned at least 85% of the blight in the area where East Patrol was erected; and then the City was using the term blight and using race to throw solid property owners out so that they could raid the CDBG money ushered into the City by con-man Cleaver. The same thing is afoot now - same neighborhood - Wendell Phillips; and still being helped/promoted by the neighborhood association and UNI lead by Diane Cleaver. All you really have to do is follow the money and it always comes back to Cleaver and his minions.
ReplyDeleteWEINRICH-ZITZMANN-WHITEHEAD, scam artists called stock brokers! "Located near the Country Club Plaza' - big too doo! They could NEVER afford Plaza offices!
ReplyDeleteDid you all know that blm was started by some lesbian black chick that wanted equal rights? If I was her I’d make these fools that stole her movement and the name and sue the hell outta them!
ReplyDelete1:23 the city didn’t own anything over there and had to buy those people out to put east patrol there. Another fun and amazing fact is the cleave promised the fat fake rev at Morningstar church that he would put the station, apartments and a private rec and learning center that’s there now way back in the nineties, it took awhile but all that was bought and paid for by the city, and it’s all run and all profits go to Morningstar.
Another brilliant scam the cleave got for his fat fake rev buddies.
Yes, the City did own plenty property in that area. I know for fact because it was used as evidence to devalue property the City wanted to acquire. Also, The Pitch had a huge article on the project and used one of the City owned properties as a cover to show or make the case for blight. I have plenty of well established facts. I agree that Morningstar should reap what it has sown. Miles should be held accountable...Kansas City style.
DeleteThe money isn’t gone. It just ends up in the hands of people who know what to do with it. Which just breeds more resentment.
ReplyDelete^^You talk too much. Go outside or something. Jeez!
ReplyDeleteEveryone hates Byron. Don't know if he is black, queer or commie. But, he is the most hated blog troll ever.
ReplyDeleteThe slaves are long deceased. We have no idea who their present family members are as they were shuffled all over the south and no records were kept. Many Blacks are recent arrivals in the past 100 years.
ReplyDeleteThe USA actually ENDED the age old (over 1 million year) practice of slavery. The Whites should get paid and rewarded for ending slavery. Many a white farmer lost an arm, leg, eye, or son in the civil war to end slavery -and it also ended their farming income. Whites should get reparartions. Not the blacks.
I've read worse than Byron - weather or not he'd get replies back at other webs where I'm at remains another question.
ReplyDeleteBlack Lives Matter leader states, “If U.S. doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it”. This is Treason, Sedition, Insurrection!
ReplyDeleteYES straight up!
Deleteyep..."reparations"..
ReplyDeletewho DIDN'T see this coming?
If you give repartions it will go into gambling, booze, drugs, guns, cadillacs and lincolns. And hookers. Do you really think it will be invested in a mutual fund?
ReplyDelete2:53. It is also making a terroristic threat.
ReplyDeleteHey KCMO city council, is this really what it is all about. All of the senseless spending in all sorts of areas which is basically designed to create employment for people who claim reparations? Jazz Museum, Street Car, Linwood Grocery, etc etc.
ReplyDeleteDoes this put the Jackson County Tax payer in a position where he will ultimately have no choice but to move to Kansas?
Does KCMO become East St Louis or Detroit?
The across the board cut in spending is an abomination. KCMO needs more Police not less police. Those calling for defunding of the police will be enabling the largest criminal gang in America. If you think crime in KC is bad now just wait until you reduce the police force. The fact is that KCMO crime has increased significantly since Ferguson.
ReplyDeleteHey City Council. Put the $6 million for 18th and Vine in a Trust account which will be paid in installments if and only if the murder rates in the 3rd District decline over the next 18 months.
ReplyDelete@6/25/20, 4:00 PM
ReplyDeleteYeah, all these people screaming defund the police and hate police....up until the point they need one. Then they want the boys in blue coming in to save their asses.
#BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor
we want 500,000.00 for each black person.
ReplyDeleteThe total percentage of whites that owned slaves way back when was less than 8% so of course every white person has to pay, even those who came here well after slavery ended.
ReplyDeleteBubba Wallace in nascar who on the best day of his racing career might finish in the top twenty at the end of a race made a huge scene about a rope that ended up being put there as far back as 2017 now that was used to lower a garage door mind you called every white person on the face of the earth racist, the fbi proved him wrong, he finally came out and did some really half ass apology once someone splained to him all those racist white people pay his salary. Too little too late bubba, you’re toast now.
Nothing I could write would adequately Express my disgust with blacks.
ReplyDeleteNothing will ever be enough for race hucksters.
I ain't paying shit to reparations and I ain't tak'in a knee.
ReplyDeleteFuck the Democrats for wanting to take a man's hard earned property and savings to give to some worthless piece of shit laying on his couch all day watching BET in his Section 8 house while eating pork rinds and gulping Colt 45.
Reparations have been paid many time over.
ReplyDeleteThe average black is a 525K drain on society.
The average White person contributes 250K to society.
We have bred a dependent race incompatable to a White civilization.
The USA actually ENDED the age old (over 1 million year) practice of slavery. The Whites should get paid and rewarded for ending slavery. Many a white farmer lost an arm, leg, eye, or son in the civil war to end slavery -and it also ended their farming income. Whites should get reparartions. Not the blacks.
ReplyDeleteI used to like Blacks. Now with their sense of ultimate entitlement - I dont like them so much anymore. This has gotten way out of hand. if they were collecting funds, and getting their folks elected that is respectable. this is just hoodlam and vandalism. Its backfiring on them!
ReplyDeleteYes, they should work for it, not DEMAND stuff
DeleteLucas is a racist compromised hack who needs gone yesterday
ReplyDeleteI agree. I would love to see the district do well and pay for more security with PRIVATE funds.
ReplyDeleteThat is the only real future for the place. We need great jazz in KC and this district has the REAL history. Let's make it a great again with investment, not handouts.
It's not really blacks I don't like, it's criminals. I'm equally wary of everyone, regardless of their skin color. I don't think anyone is owed anything. Slavery was terrible, yes. But what did the USA do? They led the world in condemning slavery. Of course it didn't happen immediately.
ReplyDeleteAnd besides, how were the Chinese treated? How were the Irish treated? The Jews? If you look hard enough, all groups were victims.
I've never owned slaves, and no slaves are alive today.
Nobody is owed anything.
So shut-up already, and stop rioting. See what happens when you obey the law.
will they give the native americans reparation also
ReplyDeleteJazz is for old fat divorced white men who think they are Doc Severenson. They are not. They are antisocial losers who dont even own a rock n roll cd.
ReplyDeleteDefund 18th & Vine.
ReplyDelete