She is still at it. Just last week, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez mentioned it again: taxpayers should make reparation payments on behalf of those who were slaves in the 1800s. My question is this: to whom, exactly, should these payments be made? The slaves have been gone for three or four generations!

And by the way, reparations have already been paid. In the years preceding the Civil War, almost everyone in the North (and many in the South) were against slavery. After four years of horrific battle, 360,222 Union soldiers died to put an end to slavery and they succeeded. That’s more wartime deaths than WW I, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan and the Revolutionary War combined. So reparation payments have already been made, AOC. They were paid in blood, spilled right here on American soil to free Blacks from slavery.

But let’s give AOC some credit. She’s engaging, attractive and can be quite articulate. Somehow, some way, she leveraged these attributes to become the Democratic representative from New York when her only experience prior to joining Congress was that of a – bartender. Quite an accomplishment, really, but it bespeaks the serious problem of electing congressional members based on charm and charisma, like AOC, but who in reality, just don’t get it! She’s a wacky leftist, who unfortunately seems to have garnered considerable traction and influence in her party. Pretty scary stuff.

Oh! Almost forgot: More recently, AOC has voiced her opinion that taxpayers should make reparation payments to the illegal aliens because we have been so mean to them at the border. I think that’s another story for another time.

Randy Hageman

La Conner