Not only has Gov. Gavin Newsom vocally opposed the proposed California billionaire tax, but he also wants to prevent the state from ever passing a wealth tax in the future.
On Friday he endorsed Proposition 42, a ballot measure that would cancel out Proposition 40, the proposed billionaire tax. Prop. 42 would prohibit retroactive taxes like the one-time 5% tax on assets that would apply to any billionaire who lived in California on Jan. 1, 2026 if Prop. 40 passes.
But Prop. 42, funded and placed on the ballot by billionaire and Google co-founder Sergey Brin to defeat the billionaire tax, also would go further, by banning any new taxes on personal property.
That includes pensions and 401K accounts before retirees start drawing retirement income from them. It also includes other investments, financial assets, business holdings, art collections and all other forms of personal wealth that would be affected by the billionaire tax or any future wealth tax.
Newsomās decision to support Prop. 42 runs counter to his own Democratic Party and some labor unions. It also aligns him with some of the wealthy tech donors with whom heās maintained longstanding relationships dating back to his days as mayor of San Francisco.
This has been the argument for literally 30 years.
Yes, youāre not fixing this in a single election. So giving up all power by agreeing to vote for a supposed ālesser evilā is giving up the future elections as well as this one - because the centrists donāt even win.
The reason to vote socialist when you lose the primary is not that third parties will win - the system does give a massive advantage to D or R candidates. Itās to record that the centrist Democrats left votes on the table, and exactly how many they did.
Yes, I totally get this, but Harris would have been better than Trump. And if the public put the same effort and pressure on her that theyāre putting on trump, it might have actually made some difference. Everything is conjecture though, because it didnāt happen that way.
I hope thereās enough socialist party support in the 2028 primaries to make a difference. If thereās a good candidate, and they get enough of the vote, Iāll probably swing that way. Things are so bad right now, that it may end up swinging public sentiment enough.
How do you propose to put āeffort and pressueā on elected officials if youāre not even willing to deny them your vote?
Remember how everyone was talking about how they were going to push Biden left after 2020? Itās nonsense - your leverage is greatest BEFORE someone is elected, not after.
Which is how weāve gotten here. Hundreds of thousands of additional people projected to die because of policies enacted by the current administration (usaid), the absolute silence from trump and his goons on gaza (yes I know Harris also supports Israel, but she seemed like sheād at least attempt to listen to us, and isnāt literally buddy buddy with bibi)
No, she didnāt. Her own internal polling showed that her support for the Gaza genocide could lose her the election. . . .and she continued it.
The people involved basically asked her just to lie to them . . . not even to change policy, but pretend she would. That was too much. The only response was āIām speakingā