Midway through this summer, a high-quality poll found that Democrats in California were overwhelmingly in favor of the upcoming ballot measure for a one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth.
The ratio was more than 4 to 1. But the state’s most powerful Democrats – including the governor Gavin Newsom, his near-certain successor Xavier Becerra and the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass – have lined up with Silicon Valley billionaires who’ve raised upward of $340m to defeat the initiative.
The terrible thing with this is that it’s these Neolib Clinton Dems that piss off the voters, and inspire the “both sides are the same” accusations. That’s where a lot of folks stop.
But if you want to change a party to be on the side of the people, willing to reinvigorate progressive tax laws, you need to vote Dem, and force the Dems to the left. You’re not going to force the GOP to the left, at all. They are absolutely the political arm of the richest. They do not exist as a party without the top 1%.
The Dems used to be more Left, and like to pretend they’re still the same New Deal folks they’ve always been. They’re not, but voters can force them to be again. Let your elected reps know what you expect of them, and threaten to primary them from the left all the time. The party can be moved. It’s definitely in need of fixing, but it can be done. Just like the Tea Party and then MAGA transformed the GOP, so too can the Dems be transformed by passionate progressives. You just have to realize that opting out, and hating the Dems for not already being what they should be, is just saying you want to lose, and to always lose.
This is a Uk perpctive. The new prime minister has pledged to end decades of neoliberalism (the great concept espoused by Rand, Friedmann, Hayek then Reagan and Thatcher). It is both rare and refreshing to hear any UK PM say any thing like this. I am fearful about the extreme ignorance, simple mindedness, and gullibility of some of the electorate. They are completely blind to the effects of neoliberalism, which is the main guiding force behind the bumptious and odious Farage, and fascist/racist Reform party who believe that competition is the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised; public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve. We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages, such as education, inheritance, and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances. As written in today’s Observer, "People don’t want much. They want someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to hope for.” And Tim Forcer added "That would be a welcome change from much of UK politics, where many promote views that assume we mostly want someone to hate, someone to envy and someone to despise.”
“Guys if we keep voting for them when they screw us over they’ll definitely stop!”
“I can fix them.”
Them: the graveyard of social movements.
We need less of the status quo dont-rock-the-boat greedy Democrats and more Progressives. Once we get back the branches, we need to start cleaning house. If you get elected and don’t carry out the will of the people who voted for you, you deserve to be fired. We want billionaires to not exist. We want millionaires to pay for the wealth they’ve gained off OUR labor. We want our tax money to go to US!!!
Neoliberals are conservatives. Just like any other conservative, there is no place in a modern society for them.
The Democratic Party is a honey trap used to capture and neutralize progressive policies and politicians, and to ensure that the “Overton Window” of American politics never moves left. The party represents the wealthy exclusively. The Republicans are a known quantity. The Democrats are the ones who tell normal people they are their friends and then stab them in the back. If we want Democracy in America, we must defeat the Democratic Party and destroy its current leadership apparatus.
If not right wing, then why right wing shaped?
Jackass party 🫏
California Democrats are just Texas Republicans with the serial numbers filed off
RepubliCrats united. Now and forever.
What we want is what’s happening in France and Germany. Americans need the big showdown between us and the police. Push them out of our cities and towns. Leave them with nowhere to go. Recall and reform the government.
Notice the age group of the situation in France. If American kids went into the streets and fought to end the uniparty’s grip on their futures then this country would begin to heal.
I would love to see this fascist state broken to pieces.
It’s amazing to have the base screaming for taxes with leadership acting like that new revenue would somehow be bad.
Hopefully this ratfuckery kills Newsom’s presidential run. He’s so transparently corrupt.
Even people barely paying attention have to see how slimy he is
it is fake news just before midterms. calm down.
Of course the top Democrats are fighting it. That’s their job, that’s what they are paid to do.
The voters want term limits, and have for decades.
The voters want universal healthcare, and have for decades.
The voters want no war, so we are practically always at war.
The voters have wanted the Epstein files released for like 20 years, so they remain top secret.
The voters have wanted the wealthy to be taxed at pre-Reagan levels, so that’s been ignored for 50 years now.
… and so on.
Every one of these issues and more are supported by about 80% of voters, and have been for a long time.
Term Limits: Every Republican in my state is throwing Term Limits on their very short list of lies they are promising, which is basically Bring down prices, Lower Taxes, No Socialism, and Term Limits. Also: Data Centers? What Data Centers? I don’t see any Data Centers.
Every MAGA claims they’ll fight for term limits, but I’ve never seen anyone actually propose it. EVERY Republican runs on it, it’s wildly popular among constituents of BOTH parties, you’d think it would be easy legislation to pass, but nobody even proposes it, despite many in the last election running on it. You’d think 20 new people would join Congress, and make that their first bill.
But they don’t, because nobody wants their NO vote to be a campaign issue in their re-election campaign.
Term limits aren’t a good idea. We end up with less knowledgeable congress people which gives lobbyists that will actually write the bills that get voted on even more power.
Lobbyists already write all the bills. Term limits won’t change that, it will make it slightly more expensive to buy Congress critters. On that point, we need massively expand the house to make it way more expensive to buy Congress and for better individual representation.
It absolutely does make a difference. The good way to have term limits is to not vote for someone when they get captured by lobbyists.
Congress gets bought for cheap. Making the house bigger so each rep covers fewer people is probably good but I doubt it makes bribery unaffordable.
Yeah, at this point we’re dealing with guys like Musk single-handedly pouring half a billion into elections, I don’t think it’s an affordability problem. And historically, smaller seats tend to be easier to bribe for, not harder. Look at any local government, especially in less populous areas, they’re some of the most corrupt politicians.
More directly, corporate dollars just don’t have any place in our politics, for any size election.
The good way to have term limits is to not vote for someone when they get captured by lobbyists.
That sentiment is a good way to perpetuate the corrupt status-quo, because it is unrealistic to expect most people to be paying attention until after the primary, when the captured incumbent is already the candidate.
Making the house bigger so each rep covers fewer people is probably good but I doubt it makes bribery unaffordable.
hence why we also need to tax the rich. They never should have gotten that rich to begin with.
I still believe the American Social democrats fumbled the bag after 2016. Bernie Sanders could have started the American Social Democratic party and they would have won both 2020 and 2024 elections. | I’m not saying Sanders should had run, a younger 40 something non establishment figure would have murdered Biden and Trump.
Social democratic reforms, are widely supported among both voting blocs. It’s lowkey insanity that party doesn’t exist yet.
I’m not ever going to blame DNC ratfucking on Bernie. He’s always done the best he could in the circumstances he was dealt.
The Democratic Party needs to be replaced from the inside, as is hopefully happening now. Splitting into a third party wasn’t ever going to work.
I think it’s unrealistic to think a new party would have been successful in 2020 and 2024, however, I think if he did choose to build a new party in 2016, the US would have had a third option for the 2028 presidential election. These things take time and we are now seeing what “could have been” from decisions ten years ago.
I’d be real cautious of who posted this as sudden news. dont abide it as fact yet. strange it suddenly popped up at this point before midterms,
It’s losing, in a landslide. And we are going to pass one of the worst voter ID laws in the country. Billionaires are going to have a very good Tuesday.
It’s losing, in a landslide
according to who?
Remember this when Newsome runs for president. The guy is from central casting in California. He used to be married to Kimberly Guilfoyle. He’s not a Progressive, he’s not even a Democrat. He’s whatever you need to hear that will convince you to throw away your vote on him.
He is a Wolf in Sheep’s clothing. He probably worked out a deal with Trump to have a phony Twitter beef, so he’d be the frontrunner for 2028, and the right would have a strong candidate among the Dems. Don’t fall for the MAGA lie.
Remember this when Newsome runs for president.
You’re going to get called a Russian Wumao Republican-plant Tankie if you say anything about this in two years
People are already doing that. You can’t criticize Newsome without some fuckwit chiming in with “BuT tRuMp WoRsE”. The candidates aren’t anywhere close to decided yet and people are already acting like anyone who doesn’t tongue Newsomes ass is a russian bot.
We all have to come to terms with the reality that the US government no longer serves its people. It needs to be reformed. Like physically halted by using masses of people to clog hallways and removing former government reps from offices. Removing names and symbolizing. Taking down their websites and nulling whatever rules or laws from the former system which kept them in power for so long.
No one else is allowed to win in our elections. They’re not even remotely legitimate. Everyone is placed in our government by the uniparty. There’s no election that takes place when the people don’t ever get to choose a representative. We’re presented with their options.
It needs to end. If we aren’t filling the streets before Christmas, then we better start.
It has never served the people going all the way back to the founding and before. It has always been the rich and powerful.
This is a fight for the soul of the Democratic party,” [California Congresscritter Ro] Khanna told me last weekend. “Will we be beholden to billionaire donors and offer platitudes without policy like Gavin Newsom, or will we reclaim our FDR courage and offer a bold vision for our nation’s future?”
Exactly 90 years ago, speaking at Madison Square Garden on the last day of October 1936, the then president Franklin Delano Roosevelt scorned the rightwing plutocrats of the day: “They are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.” Leaders of today’s Democratic party have failed to earn such hatred.
I thank you for posting , Khanna is great and we can only hope for a new deal of sorts. No war but class war.
I wanna see every working class voter register Dem and support the very first progressives that show up to primary these mother fuckers out of existence.
We hear all the time from the Republicans that California is a socialist hell hole, but they couldn’t even be fucking bothered to vote for the progressive in the primary for Pelosi’s seat.
Like, what the fuck is wrong with California?
but they couldn’t even be fucking bothered to vote for the progressive in the primary for Pelosi’s seat.
Connie chan and Saikat chakrabati were both running on a progressive platform and Chan won the primary because she had more local connections, not because Saikat was more progressive. If anything Connie had more working class bona fides being backed by the working families party and not being a centi-millionaire.
Even Scott wiener, the moderate poised to win, supports Medicare for all, Pro act, abolishing ICE, anti-AI, and even calling Gaza a genocide (after he was forced to) . By most measures he will be on the far left of the house.
It’s if NIMBY was an entire state
Silicon Valley and Hollywood are actually both some extremely predatory places that get a pass for it because people’s image of those places is the kind of artists who are devoured by the psychopaths who actually run those places, and they’re super influential on state politics
If every single Democrat was elected, they still wouldn’t raise taxes to pre Reagan levels and everybody would be sad. Suckered again!
Newsom speaking out against this one-time wealth tax lays bare for everyone that he’s in the pocket of billionaires. I didn’t like him before either, but I think Gavin Newsom is throwing away his career on this issue. How utterly tone-deaf to the mood of the US population do you have to be to oppose this
I’m sure he’s trashing his career in exchange for a boat load of money
Is it tone deafness if you hear it and just don’t give a fuck? He’s not stupid. He just knows where his money comes from.
I’m no Newson fan so correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t he oppose it in favor of taxing it at the federal level?
Nice little excuse, truth is these people have generational wealth beyond understanding. My little ape hand clearly has no grapes while my neighbor is burning extra grapes just to make space for oxygen.
If it was actually happening at the federal level he would oppose it for the exact same reason, “billionaires are going to move out of the US, we can’t tax them unless it’s an international treaty”
“An international treaty isn’t the right way to do this; billionaires will just find another solar system to move to. We can’t tax them unless it’s done by the galactic government”
You’re correct. And he’s right, but I still don’t like Gavin.
“You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do,” Newsom wrote. “Wealth is movable, and it shops for the state with the lowest taxes. The fight belongs at the federal level, where this broken system was created in the first place.”
there is a price paid by everyone when these parasites don’t pay, this extra tax proposal is just the icing on a very big cake. Fuck them and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. there are also other reason the fucks want to be in Cali and that is because its a great place to live for many many reasons Texas can’t compete with some basics required by some people. eh?
He’s right but still wrong. Think about it this way. Across the country many wanted gay marriage equality so we could just move on socially. But it didn’t happen nationally at first. It happened in CA and then CA VOTERS we’re stupid and overturned it. Then another state voted for it. And another. And another. And it went to Soctus and then it was more or less law.
Prop 40 isn’t the right way to go about this.
But it’s the proverbial domino that needs to be kicked over.
Once that happens then the ball gets rolling. Maybe a few other states like New York do the same. Watch them dare leave CA and NY. eventually wealth progressive taxation will come to federal level.
But it has to start like this because both establishment parties are ratfucked to hell.
exactly. If we can’t practice state policy, how are we suddenly going to pass it federally? State policy gives it precendence and can be a test run for how to do it at a larger scale.
id ignore statistics and dig into where they are basing this sudden news that became relavent just now. sounds like the russian bots are hitting america hard right now with a lot of bullshit.
I’m confused. Are you implying the person who wrote this article, Norman Solomon, is some kind of Russian operative? Or that his data comes from bots? I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean tbh. Seems like a pretty simple “sweep this under the rug” move from you.
Think a couple of levels deeper.
We already know that establishment democrats are fiscally captured. That’s the whole point of the DSA candidates. This isn’t news. So why now? Obviously, the midterms.
California isn’t in play next week, but lots of other places are. So a story running now doesn’t really harm establishment Californian Democrats. They’re safe. It harms other democratic candidates (probably more socialist leaning candidates) in other knife-edge states by party association.
What does somebody, who’d like these progressive democrats to lose, do a couple of days before national elections? They call up a journalist who is already pro-wealth-taxes and feed them a (true) story about Californian Democrats fighting against wealth-taxes. Story goes viral and a few blue voters stay home because “the Democrats are corrupt”. Republicans edge a seat or two that they’d otherwise had lost.
That’s what they hope, at least.
Who fed the story to the journalist? Don’t know. Could be pro-Trimp factions. Could be a Republican campaign. Could be establishment members of the Democrats that would rather see the midterms lost than lose control within the party.
Regardless, it’s all voter manipulation and needs to be ignored until after the election.
I don’t think you read this article before creating wacky conspiracy theories about it.
We already know that establishment democrats are fiscally captured.
So then why is it Russian disinformation to write an article highlighting exactly how? Even if you don’t think this is a problem, the article clearly outlines that it is. The fact you just dismiss it as Russian disinformation kinda proves to me this information is important for Americans to read. American billionaires have infinitely more influence on American elections, both Dem and Republican, than Russia ever will.
This isn’t news. So why now? Obviously, the midterms.
It IS news. It’s news because people like the author of this article (which you obviously didn’t even read before commenting) are reporting on it, as someone who is anti fascist and anti billionaire I am a person who benefits from this type of reporting. You are too.
Who fed the story to the journalist? Don’t know.
You don’t know because you didn’t read the article you just spouted crazy conspiracy nonsense about Russia. You are claiming the American Institute for Public Accuracy is compromised directly by Russia.
If you actually read what you are commenting about, you’d see he sources literally everything he’s speculating from public info that is linked within the article. He also speaks with establishment directly.
Your “thinking deeper” is going off the deep end into stupid qanon type rhetoric. Again, baseless conspiracy slop nonsense.
Why now? Because Prop 40 is on the ballot on November 3rd. Its not a coincidence that it ties into the midterms - it’s the same ballot
Its an opinion piece by ‘the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy’ - someone who’s whole thing is the tension between corporate and progressive Democrats, and wealth inequality. Not some random journalist ‘tipped off’ about prop 40 by a Russian
The usual. Its been this way since 2016 when putin put trump in the Ballroom house
“radical socialist” username
bio says overpopulation bullshit that is not true and borderline genocidal
spends time punching left
also peddling Russian bot nonsense on legitimately sourced stats (not that they’re entirely accurate but surely there’s a line between voting stat inaccuracy and literal Russian intervention)
Interesting that you even consider yourself socialist
Newsome doesn’t represent me. Californian who demands more.
Modern politics in the US and here in Canada is just a bunch of corporate goons masquerading as democratically elected representatives of the people.
It no longer what political party you call them or see them in … whether left, center or right … they are all beholden to whoever holds the most money … and none of it has anything to do with how people vote.
Cons and Libs yes. I’d argue less so for the Greens and NDP (worker funded). Not sure on PQ/BQ.
I’m an NDP supporter … always have and always will up here in northern Ontario … but even saying that, the provincial NDP and the national NDP party all show signs of bending to the will of the largest donors and supporters. Sure we can all say that it’s worker funded but in reality, any politics or political party is supported by those with money and lots of it because they are capable of hiding their money or diffusing their money through the system … they fund directly, indirectly, market, share resources, share offices, have their professional reps work for free, etc … it’s all a system driven by money and whoever has access to the most of it will get political power.
I’ll still support the NDP in every election … but I’m not naive enough to believe that it isn’t influenced by those with money.
Well said. Point taken.
Should be 1% yearly like they do to our retirement plans.
Should be 100% on anything over 20 billion. 50% for over 10 billion, and decreasing 10% for each 10 billion under that.
That’s way too high. Should be 100% over 250 million
100% over 10 million. What can you actually do with more than 10 million?
a 737 costs more than $100 million, there are normal houses that cost more than a million because of their location, I don’t think you can even buy a decent desalination plant for as little as 10 million
I’d have to look at what the equivalent is when they taxed the shit out of millionaires back in the day, I didn’t take the time to calculate CPI and figure out what the equivalent would be to be “fair” so I just made something up that sounded close.
Billions is a lot.
