
Nation's only Civil War pensioner collects $73 a month from VA (2017) - gscott
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2017/08/24/one-n-c-woman-still-receiving-civil-war-pension/594982001/
======
jxramos
I heard about such crazy arrangements before in the interview with the author
of this book [https://www.hoover.org/research/high-cost-good-intentions-
hi...](https://www.hoover.org/research/high-cost-good-intentions-history-us-
federal-entitlement-programs). He did a good job studying the history of
Federal entitlements stemming from the Civil War and how that select targeting
of veterans slowly and steadily expanded with the years. There was this
interesting entitlement creep if you will. If I recall correctly it started
with soldiers who died in battle to leave a pension or something behind for
their widows. Then some soldiers close to that qualification got the next
dibs, those who were wounded I believe, and eventually it became everyone who
served in the Civil War, and kept creeping to descendants of soldiers or
something along those lines. Pretty nuts, but does capture well that aspect of
human nature.

------
aphextron
Let this be a reminder to just how _not_ long ago the civil war really was. My
father’s grandfather was born a slave. He has childhood memories of older
relatives who remember the passage of the 13th amendment. That
intergenerational trauma is still very real and fresh for blacks in this
country. Keep this in mind whenever you wonder why systemic inequality still
exists.

~~~
lisper
Economic injustice can easily span multiple generations. I am where I am today
in no small measure because my parents could afford to provide me with a
stable environment and a house full of books to read. I never had to work to
help support the family, never had to deal with a family member addicted to
drugs, never had to worry about drug gangs roaming the street that I lived on,
never had to worry about someone judging me negatively or someone in authority
harassing me because of the color of my skin. None of that was my doing. It
happened simply because I was fortunate enough to be born to educated white
parents.

Slavery was one of the greatest evils ever perpetrated by mankind. The 13th
amendment may have begun the process of making it right, but that process is
very far from finished.

~~~
LifeLiverTransp
Yes, thats why the chinese, colonized by the japanese are still heavily
supressed - oh, victim narrative break down...

My family has shizophrenia as curse, and a part of them is all high on this
narrative. Its always some conspiracy, some evil external force, and due to
them running with this view through the world- and the world reacting, it
becomes a self fullfilling prophecy. There is never that one point, where
somebody says "Now im really free, and responsible for all what happens".

Get help. Real help. Not this eternal victim narrative which allows for
barricading in ones missery. Not that it holds up to daylight anyway, now that
the former victims, become the new colonial masters.

~~~
lisper
Japan still occupies China? That's news to me.

Black people have never been the masters of their own fate in the U.S. Slavery
was replaced by Jim Crow, which lasted 100 years. Jim Crow (which is to say,
legally sanctioned racial discrimination) was only eliminated 50 years ago,
and it has since been replaced by a more subtle program of gerrymandering [1],
racially discriminatory drug laws [2], racially discriminatory law enforcement
[3] and other daily indignities to which people of color are selectively
subjected [4]. This is not to say that individuals cannot rise above this.
They can, and they do. But that doesn't change the fact that the legacy of
slavery and other forms of racial bigotry is very much still with us, with
your tone-deaf diatribe being yet another supporting data point.

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/09/how-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/09/how-
a-widespread-practice-to-politically-empower-african-americans-might-actually-
harm-them/)

[2] [https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-
drugs](https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs)

[3] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/03/22/police-
hand...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/03/22/police-handcuffed-
black-man-who-was-moving-into-his-own-home-now-he-wants-them-fired/)

[4] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/julia-isabel-amparo-
me...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/julia-isabel-amparo-medina.html)

~~~
LifeLiverTransp
Could the very same not be claimed about nearly all other non white ethnic
groups? Still - they prevail, some even doing better then the "evil"
supressors- and are in turn discriminated against by affirmative action. Add
to that a already frail ladder when it comes to upwards mobility, which also
discards a lot of "white trash", which dont fit into this tale of victims and
evil doers either and you end up with something that just doesent sound
convincing.

Why should - beside the usual aristocratic supression of chance - single out
the black ehtnicity for discrimination, when racism and jingoism & culture
enthusiasm existed for every other ethnic group arriving in the US ?

Also was there not the option to leave free- and on there own accord? So
staying was a choice made.
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia)

~~~
lisper
> Could the very same not be claimed about nearly all other non white ethnic
> groups?

No. To be sure, people of (all) color have been systematically discriminated
against in the U.S., but none other than Africans have been subjected to
_centuries_ of _legal_ enslavement. All other ethnic groups came voluntarily,
and could leave if they wanted to. Blacks couldn't. That makes a big
difference. Also, no other ethnic group has ever been the target of legalized
discrimination on the scale of Jim Crow. The treatment of blacks has been
uniquely horrific in the U.S.

~~~
astrodust
Has been and _continues_ to be.

Perhaps the only thing over-shadowing that is the treatment of indigenous
people in the New World.

------
Luc
In Belgium there’s a woman now in her thirties who gets a WW1 survivor’s
pension. A buried shell was set off by the heat of a campfire, tearing into
her leg.

------
massivecali
I see this as a reminder of why you shouldn't remove an option from a form
just because you find it unlikely or improbable.

------
joker3
The last Revolutionary War widow died in 1906
([https://blog.genealogybank.com/last-revolutionary-war-
widow-...](https://blog.genealogybank.com/last-revolutionary-war-widow-
receives-final-pension-in-1906.html)). She was receiving pension payments
until then.

A 109-year old former slave's daughter voted for Obama in 2008
([https://www.npr.org/sections/newsandviews/2008/10/109yearold...](https://www.npr.org/sections/newsandviews/2008/10/109yearold_daughter_of_slave_v.html)).

The entire history of the US is covered by the first woman's husband, the
first woman, the second woman, and a baby born in 2008.

------
steve19
I would have thought the pension would be inflation indexed.

~~~
caprese
the pension is older than inflation based monetary policy in the United States

~~~
dontbenebby
yes, we only moved off the gold standard in 1971

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock)

~~~
skookumchuck
For practical purposes we moved off of it in 1914. The value of the dollar
steadily declined against gold from then on, despite the official exchange
rate. The divergence was nearly 2:1 by 1929, and the run on the banks then was
caused by this. The runs stopped only when FDR suspended payments in gold.

------
RickJWagner
Absolutely amazing, that someone connected to the civil war in that way is
still alive.

~~~
dmix
"Connected to the civil war" is the key word here.

She was born well after WW1 in 1930... which was 63yrs after the Civil War
ended. Meanwhile:

> The last surviving Civil War veteran died in 1956 at the age of 109,
> according to the VA.

Similarly (and probably more interesting) is the 17th century perpetual bonds
still paying interest from 370yrs+ ago:
[https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/08/the-17th-century-
bond-...](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/08/the-17th-century-bond-thats-
still.html)

~~~
est31
That's pretty cool. Kinda reminds me how often during border conflicts, modern
country states legitimize their claims with arrangements made hundreds or even
thousands of years ago.

~~~
maehwasu
Or how your EU4 spies need about a year to generate a claim on a neighboring
province, thus giving you a casus belli.

~~~
usrusr
I always suspect "inspired by Paradox" when this kind of comment comes up.
It's scary to see how much these games influence our perception of history,
considering the permanent conflict of interest between accuracy and gameplay.

On the other hand, those games are teaching _models_ instead of "facts", which
is much less prone to cause future conflict when the stuff taught is not
exactly consistent with what others were told. Ever met one of those people
who only know Hitler as heroic shatterer of colonialism? scary. All in all,
Paradox is doing an amazingly good job, but we should not only be careful
about how many hours we lose to them, we also need to be wary of putting too
much faith into the models we absorb from them.

------
bronson
The article without the google survey ads:
[https://outline.com/bjSx3m](https://outline.com/bjSx3m)

