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.
Newsom’s 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 he’s maintained longstanding relationships dating back to his days as mayor of San Francisco.
What is your strategy and can you point to it having worked recently? Electing Obama was preferable to electing McCain, was it not? Electing Clinton was preferable to reelecting Bush Sr., was it not? Electing Hillary would have been preferable to Trump. Y/N? Electing Biden was preferable to reelecting Trump. Y/N? Electing Harris would have been preferable to Trump. Y/N?
This isn’t complicated. The system is dead simple, and certain people keep making the wrong choices. We are a democracy. We have the government we have not because choices are being forced on us, but because our citizens keep making shitty choices. Can we not? Please?
If you have a democracy how come the US government so often does things no one voted/asked for? Unless the US government tricks everyone into thinking it’s a democracy so they can shift the blame away from themselves whenever they do something horrible.
That’s the thing: we did vote for this. Look who won the last election.
The system is incredibly complicated. You’ve just been too absent to notice, and this is not a good system… Its terrible.
And wow… What a choice we have! Corpo pigs or corpo pigs with sharper teeth. Elections have some effect but that study from Princeton years ago LITERALLY showed that elections are mainly useless. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
Organizing, community structuring, mutual aid, decentralizing, educating are all completely necessary alongside it. Honestly, often in replacement of the complete failure our system is.
And I know I’m about to be accused of being a anti-voting shill who has been recruited right before midterms. I’m not, I do vote (very intentionally and informed) every election, but I think we need to do SOOO much more.
Show me the better alternative to voting strategically. I never claimed the US system is great and perfect and directly produces wonderful results. Nobody over age 12 believes that bullshit, especially not lately.
In our deeply, deeply flawed system, consistently voting strategically is one of the most effective things we can do to effect change for good. Not perfect, but good. I urge all my fellow citizens to master the art of holding their noses and voting for the candidate more likely to improve their lives, or less likely to fuck them over. The alternative is accelerationism towards collapse, and the people on the left who say they want that are all woefully unprepared for the consequences. (The accelerationists on the right are also unprepared, but at least they have a lot of guns.)
As for doing more: I agree. AFTER we charitably elect the lesser evil, we should be calling their offices every day. We should be demonstrating. We should be engaging in civil disobedience. Our jobs do not end on election day, but we should never, ever allow the GOP to seize power electorally when it’s so easy to keep them out. That is tying both hands behind our backs and making sure the people in power not only disregard us, but despise us.