Lawyers, claiming to represent hyphenated Americans of African descent have filed lawsuits against three companies claiming they profited from slavery. The three companies are CSX, Aetna Insurance and FleetBoston Financial. The idea behind the lawsuit is that today's employees and stockholders should be financially punished for acts perpetrated against people long dead by people long dead. Looking closely one is struck by the shear stupidity of those who would hold people with no connection to historical deeds financially liable. Some employees associated with these companies will inevitably be members of the group said to be the injured party. Should they lose jobs for alleged benefits from business activities in the 18th century? Has common sense been abandoned?

It appears that in 21st century America, stupidity trumps reason, especially in the area of race relations. It doesn't take a genius to dream up absurdities like this. I have a lawsuit waiting in the wings that rivals reparations for its shear moronic possibility of success. We should look closely at the current income disparity between the descents of the American slaves and the non-hyphenated Africans of African descent who were not captured and sold into slavery. Since the standard of living between Africans in Africa and the hyphenated Americans shows that American Africans benefited from the horrors of 18th century slavery, money should be taxed from the black middle and upper class in the United States and redistributed to the shockingly poor people in Africa. This would repay them for their bad luck of not having been captured and brought to the land of plenty that the descendants of slaves currently enjoy. After all, through no fault of their own, they were left behind in squalid conditions that haven't changed in the intervening eras.

These lawsuits that claim profiting from our capitalist system--from legal enterprise 143 years ago should be summarily dismissed as frivolous. It is simply the latest chapter in the legal profession's "let's fleece the taxpayer" saga. Originally, the idea was to force the government to cut checks to people who were never slaves, using money from people who never owned slaves, to repay non-slaves for the actions of dead people. The company angle seeks to test the waters of legal goofiness to make money.

There are three positions emerging on the issue of reparations. There are those in favor (the lawyers). There are liberals who think it's a bad idea. There are the rest of the people who find the whole notion laughable--people like me. The proponents of reparations think this makes a great political hammer they can use to pound the nation into a collective sense of guilt. No one is saying "how much" or "how it is to be paid." They are still hashing that out. I assume the lawyers will be paid first.

The liberal opposition to reparations comes from the belief that if the nation is forced to pay reparations, then they will be killing and eating the goose that laid the golden eggs. They have a point. If by some miracle the country loses its mind and pays, apart from risking a revolution and every incumbent politician losing their jobs, the age of the victim would end. No affirmative action or race based preferences. Debt paid in full. The hyphenated Americans would be placed in a position of accepting self-reliance. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would be unemployed.

I know that reparations are ridiculous and will never come to fruition. The idea that the descendants of immigrants who arrived after slavery would be taxed to pay off the descendants of slavery is ludicrous. The complexity of determining the payments would make the human genome project look simple by comparison. Who gets paid? How much? How is the money distributed? Does Halle Berry only get half a check?